icipate in her sacred orgies. The barbarous rites
according to which the Great Mother was to be worshiped were performed by
Phrygian priests and priestesses. The holidays celebrated in her honor by
the entire nation, the _Megalensia_, contained no Oriental feature and were
organized in conformity with Roman traditions.

A characteristic anecdote told by Diodorus[9] shows what the public feeling
was towards this Asiatic worship at the end of the republic. In Pompey's
time a high priest from Pessinus came to Rome, presented himself at the
forum in his sacerdotal garb, a golden diadem and a long embroidered
robe--and pretending that the statue of his goddess had been profaned
demanded public expiation. But a tribune forbade him to wear the royal
crown, and the populace rose against him in a mob and compelled him to seek
refuge in his house. Although apologies were made later, this story shows
how little the people of that period felt {53} the veneration that attached
to Cybele and her clergy after a century had passed.

Kept closely under control, the Phrygian worship led an obscure existence
until the establishment of the empire. That closed the first period of its
history at Rome. It attracted attention only on certain holidays, when its
priests marched the streets in procession, dressed in motley costumes,
loaded with heavy jewelry, and beating tambourines. On those days the
senate granted them the right to go from house to house to collect funds
for their temples. The remainder of the year they confined themselves to
the sacred enclosure of the Palatine, celebrating foreign ceremonies in a
foreign language. They aroused so little notice during this period that
almost nothing is known of their practices or of their creed. It has even
been maintained that Attis was not worshiped together with his companion,
the Great Mother, during the times of the republic, but this is undoubtedly
wrong, because the two persons of this divine couple must have been as
inseparable in the ritual as they were in the myths.[10]

But the Phrygian religion kept alive in spite of police surveillance, in
spite of precautions and prejudices; a breach had been made in the cracked
wall of the old Roman principles, through which the entire Orient finally
gained ingress.

Directly after the fall of the republic a second divinity from Asia Minor,
closely related to the Great Mother, became established in the capital.
During the wars against Mithrida