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

48 THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
celebrated their festal days. 1
They believed that Cybele
resided on the high summits of Ida and Berecyntus,
and the perennial pines, in conjunction with the pro
lific and early maturing almond tree, were the sacred
trees of Attis. Besides trees, the country people wor
shiped stones, rocks or meteors that had fallen from
the sky like the one taken from Pessinus to Pergamum
also venerated certain ani
and thence to Rome. They
mals, especially the most powerful of them all, the lion,
who may at one time have been the totem of savage
tribes. 2 In mythology as well as in art the lion re
mained the riding or driving animal of the Great
Mother. Their conception of the divinity was indis
tinct and impersonal. A goddess of the earth, called
Ma or Cybele, was revered as the fecund mother of
all things, the "mistress of the wild beasts ^ that in
habit the woods. A god Attis, or Papas, was regarded
as her husband, but the first place in this divine house
hold belonged to the woman, a reminiscence of the
period of matriarchy .4
When the Phrygians at a very early period came
from Thrace and inserted themselves like a wedge in
the old Anatolian races, they adopted the vague deities
of their new country by identifying them with their
own, after the habit of pagan nations. Thus Attis be
came one with the Dionysus-Sabazius of the con
querors, or at least assumed some of his characteristics.
This Thracian Dionysus was a god of vegetation. Fou-
cart has thus admirably pictured his savage nature:
"Wooded summits, deep oak and pine forests, ivy-clad
caverns were at all times his favorite haunts. Mortals
who were anxious to know the powerful divinity ruling
these solitudes had to observe the life of his kingdom,