1 Earliest Rome

12. R E L I G I O U S G R O U P S
The Assyrians call you thrice desired Adonis, all Egypt, Osiris,
Greek wisdom, the heavenly crescent of the Moon,
The Samothracians venerate Adamna, the people of Haemus, Korybas,
The Phrygians, sometimes Papas, sometimes [again] the Dead, God,
The Unfruitful, the Goatherd, the green Ear that is harvesred,
Or the Man playing the flute, the Fruitful, born of Almond. 2
So this is the nature, he says, of the many-shaped Atfis, whom they describe as follows in
a hymn:
I will sing of Attls, son of Rhea,
Not with the clang of bells,
Nor with a roaring pipe
Of the Kouretes of Ida,
But I shall join the song of Phoebus
With the lyre. Hail,
Hail, as Pan, as Bacchus,
As shepherd of the shining stars.
Because of these and similar words, they attend the so-called mysteries of the Great
Mother, considering that they can actually observe [their own] whole mystery in those
rites. They have nothing beyond those rites, except that they are not castrared, but only
perform rhe role of those who are castrated. For they urge most severely and carefully that
one should abstain, like castrated men, from intercourse with women; in general, as we
have fully explained, they act like castrated men.
1. A three-headed or three-bodied giant of Greek mythology.
2. For this type of language see 12.4b.
12.7e(v) Christian logicians.
In the late second century A.D. oneTheodotus taught in Rome that Christ was
a mere man who was made divine only at his baptism. An anonymous treatise
written in Rome perhaps in the 230s A.D. (partially preserved by Eusebius)
attacks his followers for their textual emendations of scripture and for their use
of contemporary logic.
See further: Ghellinck (1948) ni.289-96; Walzer (1949) 75-86*; Lampe
(1989) 290-4.
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History V.28 A 3-14
They have without hesitation falsified the divine texts and have rejected the rule of the
primitive faith. They are ignorant of Christ: rather than seek out what the divine texts
say, they have diligently set out to find a figure of syllogism as the basis of their
godiessness. And if someone puts before them a saying from the divine text, they try to
see whether a hypothetical or a disjunctive form of syllogism can be made out of it. 1
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