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

ASIA MINOR.
deliverance from subjection to carnal instincts, and a
fervent desire to free the soul from the bonds of mat
ter. The ascetic tendencies went so far as to create
a kind of begging monachism the metragyrtcs. They v/
also harmonized with some of the ideas of renunciation
taught by Greek philosophy, and at an early period
Hellenic theologians took an interest in this devotion
that attracted and repelled them at the same time. Ti-
motheus the Eumolpid, who was one of the founders
of the Alexandrian religion of Serapis, derived the in
spiration for his essays on religious reform, among
other sources, from the ancient Phrygian myths. Those
thinkers undoubtedly succeeded in making the priests
of Pessinus themselves admit many speculations quite
foreign to the old Anatolian nature worship. The
votaries of Cybele began at a very remote period to
practise "mysteries" in which the initiates were made
acquainted, by degrees, with a wisdom that was always
considered divine, but underwent peculiar variations
in the course of time.
* * *
Such is the religion which the rough Romans of the
Punic wars accepted and adopted. Hidden under theo
logical and cosmological
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doctrines it contained an an
cient stock of very primitive and coarse religious ideas,
such as the worship of trees, stones and animals. Be
sides this superstitious fetichism it involved ceremonies
that were both sensual and ribald, including all the
wild and mystic rites of the bacchanalia which the
public authorities were to prohibit a few years later.
When the senate became better acquainted with the
divinity imposed upon it by the Sibyls,
it must have
been quite embarrassed by the present of King Attains.