own at
present, and it must be admitted that it would appear at a disadvantage if
judged by those noticeable features that first attract our attention. It
had retained a stock of very primitive ideas and some aboriginal nature
worship that had lasted through many centuries and was to persist, in part,
under Christianity and Islam until the present day.[28] Such were the
worship of high elevations on which a rustic enclosure sometimes marked the
limits of the consecrated territory; the worship of the waters that flow to
the sea, the streams that arise in the mountains, the springs that gush out
of the soil, the ponds, the lakes and the wells, into all of which
offerings were thrown with the idea either of venerating in them the
thirst-quenching liquid or else the fecund nature of the earth; the worship
of the trees that shaded the altars and that nobody dared to fell or
mutilate; the worship of stones, especially of the rough stones called
bethels that were regarded, as their name (_beth-El_) indicates, as the
residence of the god, or rather, as the matter in which the god was
embodied.[29] Aphrodite Astarte was worshiped in the shape of a conical
stone at Paphos, and a black aerolite covered with projections and
depressions to which a symbolic meaning was attributed represented
Elagabal, and was transferred from Emesa to Rome, as we have said.

The animals, as well as inanimate things, received their share of homage.
Remnants of the old Semitic zoolatry perpetuated themselves until the end
of paganism and even later. Frequently the gods were {117} represented
standing erect on animals. Thus the Dolichean Baal stood on a steer, and
his spouse on a lion. Around certain temples there were sacred parks, in
which savage beasts roamed at liberty,[30] a reminder of the time when they
were considered divine. Two animals especially were the objects of
universal veneration, the pigeon and the fish. Vagrant multitudes of
pigeons received the traveler landing at Ascalon,[31] and they played about
the enclosures of all the temples of Astarte[32] in flocks resembling white
whirlwinds. The pigeon belonged, properly speaking, to the goddess of love,
whose symbol it has remained above all to the people worshiping that
goddess.

"Quid referam ut volitet crebras intacta per urbes
Alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro?"[33]

The fish was sacred to Atargatis, who undoubtedly had been represented in
that shape at first, as Dagon always wa