ent of the rattling of coin
in the money box--for the collection of money from the bystanders was
always a part of the performance.

This then was what the "best man in the state" and the grave Roman
matrons went forth from Rome to receive--a sacred stone representing the
goddess, and a band of noisy emasculated priests; and this was what they
opened their gates to, and took up into their holy of holies, the
Palatine hill, the birthplace of Rome. The Greeks had again come bearing
gifts, and like the Trojans who broke down their walls and took the
wooden horse up into their citadel, Romans, the reputed descendents of
these Trojans, were carrying up to their most sacred hill another gift
of Greece which was to capture their city. They put the image in the
temple of Victoria on the Palatine until such time as its own temple was
ready to receive it, and the goddess of Victory seemed to respond to its
presence, for did not Hannibal leave Italy the very next year? And who
would be so impious as to suggest that to Scipio and not Cybele belonged
the glory, and that a strong Roman army in Africa affected Hannibal
more than a sacred stone on the Palatine?

It may well be doubted whether anything but such a great exigency would
ever have induced Rome to accept such an utterly foreign cult; and when
the nightmare of the war was past, the Senate awoke to the realisation
that a very serious act had been committed. To their credit be it said
that they did what they could to minimise the evil. The goddess had
brought her own priests with her, the cult was in their hands, and there
the law decreed it must stay, and no Roman citizen could become a
priest. That this law was really enforced is shown by several cases
where punishment, even transportation across the sea, was meted out to
transgressors. Then too the worship must be in the main confined to the
precincts of the temple on the Palatine, and only on certain days of the
year were the priests allowed to perform in the streets of the city. It
is significant of the strength of Roman law that these enactments held
good for three and a half centuries, and were not changed until the
reign of Antoninus Pius.

In the introduction of the Great Mother the Sibylline books performed
their last and most notable achievement. Hereafter they introduced no
new deities, and were consulted only occasionally, chiefly for political
purposes, for example in B.C. 87 against the followers of Sulla, and