m subjection to carnal
instincts, and a fervent desire to free the soul from the bonds of matter.
The ascetic tendencies went so far as to create a kind of begging
monachism--the _metragyrtes_. They 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. Timotheus the Eumolpid, who was one of the founders
of the Alexandrian religion of Serapis, derived the inspiration 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"[7] 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 theological and cosmological doctrines it contained
an ancient stock of very primitive and coarse religious ideas, such as the
worship of trees, stones and animals. Besides 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
Attalus. {52} The enthusiastic transports and the somber fanaticism of the
Phrygian worship contrasted violently with the calm dignity and respectable
reserve of the official religion, and excited the minds of the people to a
dangerous degree. The emasculated Galli were the objects of contempt and
disgust and what in their own eyes was a meritorious act was made a crime
punishable by law, at least under the empire.[8] The authorities hesitated
between the respect due to the powerful goddess that had delivered Rome
from the Carthaginians and the reverence for the _mos maiorum_. They solved
the difficulty by completely isolating the new religion in order to prevent
its contagion. All citizens were forbidden to join the priesthood of the
foreign goddess or to part