sinus was
constantly changing. When astrology and the Semitic religions caused the
establishment of a solar henotheism as the leading religion at Rome, Attis
was considered as the sun, "the shepherd of the twinkling stars." He was
identified with Adonis, Bacchus, Pan, Osiris and Mithra; he was made a
"polymorphous"[40] being in which all celestial powers manifested {70}
themselves in turn; a _pantheos_ who wore the crown of rays and the lunar
crescent at the same time, and whose various emblems expressed an infinite
multiplicity of functions.

When neo-Platonism was triumphing, the Phrygian fable became the
traditional mould into which subtle exegetists boldly poured their
philosophic speculations on the creative and stimulating forces that were
the principles of all material forms, and on the deliverance of the divine
soul that was submerged in the corruption of this earthly world. In his
hazy oration on the Mother of the Gods, Julian lost all notion of reality
on account of his excessive use of allegory and was swept away by an
extravagant symbolism.[41]

Any religion as susceptible to outside influences as this one was bound to
yield to the ascendancy of Christianity. From the explicit testimony of
ecclesiastical writers we know that attempts were made to oppose the
Phrygian mysteries to those of the church. It was maintained that the
sanguinary purification imparted by the taurobolium was more efficacious
than baptism. The food that was taken during the mystic feasts was likened
to the bread and wine of the communion; the Mother of the Gods was
undoubtedly placed above the Mother of God, whose son also had risen again.
A Christian author, writing at Rome about the year 375, furnishes some
remarkable information on this subject. As we have seen, a mournful
ceremony was celebrated on March 24th, the _dies sanguinis_ in the course
of which the _galli_ shed their blood and sometimes mutilated themselves in
commemoration of the wound that had caused Attis's death, ascribing an
expiatory and atoning power to the blood thus shed. The pagans {71} claimed
that the church had copied their most sacred rites by placing her Holy Week
at the vernal equinox in commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross on
which the divine Lamb, according to the church, had redeemed the human
race. Indignant at these blasphemous pretensions, St. Augustine tells of
having known a priest of Cybele who kept saying: _Et ipse Pileatus
christianus est_