ousehold, the priests, who turned the reverent formalism of the old
days into a mockery, and made their priesthood merely a means of
political influence.

Now that the old Roman gods had been changed into new-fangled Greek
gods, and the old Roman priesthoods into modern political clubs, it is
little wonder that the religion of the fathers ceased to satisfy their
descendants. But while history shows that specific religious creeds have
often proved mortal and subject to change and decay, the same history
makes clear that the religious instinct is a constant factor in
humanity; and we must not suppose for a moment that the religious need
of the Roman community had ceased to exist, simply because the religion
of the state had ceased to satisfy it. From the day when the Sibyl gave
her first oracles to Rome on down to the time of Sulla, the desire for
the sensational and the extraordinary in religion had been steadily
growing. It had its birth in the idea that there was such a thing as a
direct communion with the deity, and that the oracles were an immediate
command from him. It was nourished by the sense of foreignness in the
Greek ceremonies gradually introduced into the cult. It fed on the more
sensational aspects of certain of the gods brought in: on the
enthusiastic rites of Bacchus, on the miracle-working of Aesculapius, on
the Stygian mystery of Dis and Proserpina. But its fulfilment was to
come from the East, that inexhaustible fountain of religious energy. In
the Magna Mater it recognised its own. This was the first undiluted
Orientalism which came to Rome. But the state itself had received it,
and had managed in some unaccountable way to put upon this outlandish
Eastern cult the stamp of Rome's nationality, that stamp which no nation
ever successfully and permanently resisted; and thus the reception of
the cult on the part of the state was not only a disgraceful thing,
tending to degrade true religion and spread the contagion of
Orientalism, but it also made those whose appetite had been aroused
eager for other deities, whose cult would have the great additional
charm of being unlicensed by the state, and hence savouring of
unlawfulness.

Such a cult, long half-consciously desired, was at length found, when in
B.C. 92 the Roman soldiery commanded by Sulla penetrated into the valley
of Comana in Cappadocia. There was a whole community, a miniature state,
devoted to the service of a goddess not unlike the Great Mothe