st of religion which we have just
described stand the different foreign worships, which this epoch
cherished and fostered, and which were at least undeniably
possessed of a very decided vitality. They meet us everywhere,
among genteel ladies and lords as well as among the circles of
the slaves, in the general as in the trooper, in Italy as in the
provinces. It is incredible to what a height this superstition
already reached. When in the Cimbrian war a Syrian prophetess,
Martha, offered to furnish the senate with ways and means for the
vanquishing of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt;
nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius' own wife in particular
despatched her to his head-quarters, where the general readily
received her and carried her about with him till the Teutones were
defeated. The leaders of very different parties in the civil war,
Marius, Octavius, Sulla, coincided in believing omens and oracles.
During its course even the senate was under the necessity, in the
troubles of 667, of consenting to issue directions in accordance
with the fancies of a crazy prophetess. It is significant of
the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well as of
the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious
stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic
mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even
the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured
in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost
rank. The copious introduction of elements from Asia Minor and
Syria into the population, partly by the import of slaves, partly
by the augmented traffic of Italy with the east, contributed very
greatly to this result.

The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly apparent
in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the most part were
natives of Syria. Eunus vomited fire, Athenion read the stars;
the plummets thrown by the slaves in these wars bear in great part
the names of gods, those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that
of the mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily and
was zealously worshipped there. A similar effect was produced by
commercial intercourse, particularly after the wares of Berytus and
Alexandria were conveyed directly to the Italian ports; Ostia and
Puteoli became the great marts not only for Syrian unguents and
Egyptian linen, but also for the faith of the east. Everywher