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

106 THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
waited with their devotions until a band of itinerant
galli passed through the distant hamlet where the lot
of the auction had sent them. The existence of those
wandering priests depended, therefore, on the number
of fellow-countrymen they met in the rural districts,
who supported them by sacrificing a part of their poor
savings.
Towards the end of the republic those diviners
appear to have enjoyed rather serious consideration
at Rome. It was a pythoness from Syria that advised
Marius on the sacrifices he was to perform.?
Under the empire the importation of slaves in
creased. Depopulated Italy
needed more and more
foreign hands, and Syria furnished a large quota of
the forced immigration of cultivators. But those
Syrians, quick and intelligent as they were strong
and industrious, performed many other functions.
They filled the countless domestic positions in the
palaces of the aristocracy and were especially appre
ciated as litter-bearers. 8 The imperial and municipal
administrations, as well as the big contractors to whom
customs and the mines were farmed out, hired or
bought them in large numbers, and even in the re
motest border provinces the Syrus was found serving
princes, cities or private individuals. The worship
of the Syrian goddess profited considerably by the
\J economic current that continually brought new wor
shipers. We find her mentioned in the first century
of our era in a Roman inscription referring in precise
terms to the slave market, and we know that Nero
took a devout fancy to the stranger that did not, how
ever, last very long.9 In the popular Trastevere quarter
she had a temple until the end of paganism. 10