have
preserved the custom of designating the Greek gods by their Latin
names; we still call Artemis Diana, and Pallas Minerva.

=The Bacchanals.=--The Greeks had adopted an oriental god, Bacchus,
the god of the vintage, and the Romans began to adore him also. The
worshippers of Bacchus celebrated his cult at night and in secret.
Only the initiated were admitted to the mysteries of the Bacchanals,
who swore not to reveal any of the ceremonies. A woman, however, dared
to denounce to the Senate the Bacchanalian ceremonies that occurred in
Rome in 186. The Senate made an inquiry, discovered 7,000 persons, men
and women, who had participated in the mysteries, and had them put to
death.

=Oriental Superstitions.=--Already in 220 there was in Rome a temple
of the Egyptian god Serapis. The Senate ordered it to be demolished.
As no workman dared to touch it, the consul himself had to come and
beat down the doors with blows of an axe.

Some years after, in 205, during the war with Hannibal, it was the
Senate itself that sent an ambassador to Asia Minor to seek the
goddess Cybele. The Great Mother (as she was called) was represented
by a black stone, and this the envoys of the Senate brought in great
pomp and installed in Rome. Her priests followed her and paced the
streets to the sound of fifes and cymbals, clad in oriental fashion,
and begging from door to door.

Later, Italy was filled with Chaldean sorcerers. The mass of the
people were not the only ones to believe in these diviners. When the
Cimbri menaced Rome (104), Martha, a prophetess of Syria, came to the
Senate to offer it victory over the barbarians; the Senate drove her
out, but the Roman women brought her to the camp, and Marius, the
general in chief, kept her by him and consulted her to the end of the
war. Sulla, likewise, had seen in vision the goddess of Cappadocia and
it was on her advice that he took his way to Italy.

=Sceptics.=--Not only priests and diviners came to Rome, but also
philosophers who scoffed at the old religion. The best known of these,
Carneades, the ambassador of the Athenians, spoke in Rome in public,
and the youth of Rome came in crowds to hear him. The Senate bade him
leave the city. But the philosophers continued to teach in the schools
of Athens and Rhodes, and it was the fashion to send the Roman youth
thither for instruction. About the third century before Christ
Euhemerus, a Greek, had written a book to prove that there were no