n eternal rebirth of the soul.
The descent into the pit was regarded as burial, a melancholy dirge
accompanied the burial of the old man who had died. When he emerged
purified of all his crimes by the sprinkling of blood and raised to a new
life, he was regarded as the equal of a god, and the crowd worshiped him
from a respectful distance.[36]

The vogue obtained in the Roman empire by the practice of this repugnant
rite can only be explained by the extraordinary power ascribed to it. He
who submitted to it was _in aeternum renatus_,[37] according to the
inscriptions.

We could also outline the transformation of other Phrygian ceremonies, of
which the spirit and sometimes the letter slowly changed under the
influence of more advanced moral ideas. This is true of the sacred feasts
attended by the initiates. One of the few liturgic formulas antiquity has
left us refers to these Phrygian banquets. One hymn says: "I have eaten
from the tambourine, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have become a mystic
of Attis." The banquet, which is found in several Oriental religions, was
sometimes simply the {69} external sign indicating that the votaries of the
same divinity formed one large family. Admitted to the sacred table, the
neophyte was received as the guest of the community and became a brother
among brothers. The religious bond of the thiasus or _sodalicium_ took the
place of the natural relationship of the family, the gens or the clan, just
as the foreign religion replaced the worship of the domestic hearth.

Sometimes other effects were expected of the food eaten in common. When the
flesh of some animal supposed to be of a divine nature was eaten, the
votary believed that he became identified with the god and that he shared
in his substance and qualities. In the beginning the Phrygian priests
probably attributed the first of these two meanings to their barbarous
communions.[38] Towards the end of the empire, moral ideas were
particularly connected with the assimilation of sacred liquor and meats
taken from the tambourine and cymbal of Attis. They became the staff of the
spiritual life and were to sustain the votary in his trials; at that period
he considered the gods as especially "the guardians of his soul and
thoughts."[39]

As we see, every modification of the conception of the world and of man in
the society of the empire had its reflection in the doctrine of the
mysteries. Even the conception of the old deities of Pes