The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [1911] - Get a Free Blog

EGYPT. 97
kept up and renewed faith, and, we might say, people
lived continually under the eyes of the gods.
Besides the daily rites of the Abydos liturgy the
holidays marking the beginning of the different sea
sons were celebrated at the same date every year.? 2
It was the same in Italy. The calendars have pre
served the names of several of them, and of one, the
N aright m Isidis, the rhetorician Apuleius^s has left
us a brilliant description on which, to speak with the
ancients, he emptied all his color tubes. On March
5th, when navigation reopened after the winter months,
a gorgeous procession74 marched to the coast, and a
ship consecrated to Isis, the protectress of sailors, was
launched. A burlesque group of masked persons
opened the procession, then came the women in white
gowns strewing flowers, the stolistes waving the gar
ments of the goddess and the dadophori with lighted
torches. After these came the hymn odes, whose songs
mingled in turn with the sharp sound of the cross-
flutes and the ringing of the brass timbrels ; then the
throngs of the initiates, and finally the priests, with
shaven heads and clad in linen robes of a dazzling
white, bearing the images of animal-faced gods and
strange symbols, as for instance a golden
urn con
taining the sacred water of the Nile. The procession
stopped in front of altars75 erected along the road,
and on these altars the sacred objects were uncovered
for the veneration of the faithful. The strange and
sumptuous magnificence
of these celebrations made a
deep impression on the common people who loved
public entertainments.
But of all the celebrations connected with the wor
ship of Isis the most stirring and the most suggestive