um; the old rites, many and
diversified, if separately obscure, which came from Punic times; the new
importations from Syria and Phrygia, and a number of other haunts and
schools of depravity and crime, did their part in swelling or giving
character to the concourse. The hungry and idle rabble, the filthy beggars
who fed on the offal of the sacrifices, the drivers and slaughterers of
the beasts sacrificed; the tumblers and mountebanks who amused the gaping
market-people; dancers, singers, pipers from low taverns and
drinking-houses; infamous creatures, young and old, men and boys, half
naked and not half sober; brutal blacks, the aboriginal race of the Atlas,
with their appetites written on their skulls and features; Canaanites, as
they called themselves, from the coast; the wild beast-keepers from the
amphitheatre; troops of labourers from the fields, to whom the epidemic
was a time of Saturnalia; and the degraded company, alas! how numerous and
how pitiable, who took their nightly stand in long succession at the doors
of their several cells in the deep galleries under the Thermae; all these,
and many others, had their part and place in the procession. There you
might see the devilish emblems of idolatry borne aloft by wretches from
the great Punic Temple, while frantic forms, ragged and famished, wasted
and shameless, leapt and pranced around them. There too was a choir of
Bacchanals, ready at a moment with songs as noisy as they were
unutterable. And there was the priest of the Punic Saturn, the
child-devourer, a sort of Moloch, to whom the martyrdom of Christians was
a sacred rite; he and all his attendants in fiery-coloured garments, as
became a sanguinary religion. And there, moreover, was a band of fanatics,
devotees of Cybele or of the Syrian goddess, if indeed the two rites were
distinct. They were bedizened with ribbons and rags of various colours,
and smeared over with paint. They had long hair like women, and turbans on
their heads. They pushed their way to the head of the procession, being
quite worthy of the post of honour, and, seizing the baker's ass, put
their goddess on the back of it. Some of them were playing the fife,
others clashing cymbals, others danced, others yelled, others rolled their
heads, and others flogged themselves. Such was the character of the
frenzied host, which progressed slowly through the streets, while every
now and then, when there was an interval in the hubbub, the words
"Christ