s are frequently decorated with the
figure of a young man in Oriental costume, leaning dejectedly upon a
knotted stick (_pedum_), who represented the same Attis. We are ignorant of
the conception of immortality held by the Oriental disciples of the
Phrygian priests. Maybe, like the votaries of Sabazius, they believed that
the blessed ones were permitted to participate with Hermes Psychopompos in
a great celestial feast, for which they were prepared by the sacred repasts
of the mysteries.[23] {60}

Another agent in favor of this imported religion was, as we have stated
above, the fact of its official recognition. This placed it in a privileged
position among Oriental religions, at least at the beginning of the
imperial regime. It enjoyed a toleration that was neither precarious nor
limited; it was not subjected to arbitrary police measures nor to coercion
on the part of magistrates; its fraternities were not continually
threatened with dissolution, nor its priests with expulsion. It was
publicly authorized and endowed, its holidays were marked in the calendars
of the pontiffs, its associations of dendrophori were organs of municipal
life in Italy and in the provinces, and had a corporate entity.

Therefore it is not surprising that other foreign religions, after being
transferred to Rome, sought to avert the dangers of an illicit existence by
an alliance with the Great Mother. The religion of the latter frequently
consented to agreements and compromises, from which it gained in reality as
much as it gave up. In exchange for material advantages it acquired
complete moral authority over the gods that accepted its protection. Thus
Cybele and Attis absorbed a majority of the divinities from Asia Minor that
had crossed the Ionian Sea. Their clergy undoubtedly intended to establish
a religion complex enough to enable the emigrants from every part of the
vast peninsula, slaves, merchants, soldiers, functionaries, scholars, in
short, people of all classes of society, to find their national and
favorite devotions in it. As a matter of fact no other Anatolian god could
maintain his independence side by side with the deities of Pessinus.[24]

We do not know the internal development of the {61} Phrygian mysteries
sufficiently to give details of the addition of each individual part. But
we can prove that in the course of time certain religions were added to the
one that had been practised in the temple of the Palatine ever since the