at of the temple of Cybele, the Mother of the Gods or the Great
Mother. In the second Punic War the Romans sent ambassadors to
Pessinus, and got permission to convey to Rome the Great Mother of the
Gods, who was a sacred stone. The Sibylline Books had declared that
when a foreign enemy was in Italy, he could be driven out, if the
Idaean mother, for Cybele was so called also, was brought to Rome. The
goddess was received at Rome (B.C. 203) with great respect, and placed
in the temple of Victory. (Livius, 29, c. 10, &c.) Plutarch does not
explain how the goddess now happened to be in Asia and Rome at the
same time, for there is no account of her leaving Rome after she was
taken there. The annual celebration called Megalesia, that is, the
festival of the Great Mother, was instituted at Rome in honour of the
goddess, and celebrated in the spring. (Herodianus, i. 32, &c.) It was
a tradition that the stone fell from the skies at Pessinus. There was
another great stone in Syria (Herodianus, v. 5), in the temple of the
Sun, which was worshipped: the stone was round in the lower part, and
gradually tapered upwards; the colour was black, and the people Aida
that it fell from heaven. It is probable that these stones were
aerolites, the falling of which is often recorded in ancient writers,
and now established beyond all doubt by repeated observation in modern
times. (See _Penny Cyclopaedia_, "AErolites.") There is a large specimen
in the British Museum. The immediate cause of the Romans sending for
the Great Mother was a heavy shower of stones at Rome, an occurrence
which in those days was very common. One might have supposed that one
of the Roman aerolites would have answered as well as the stone of
Pessinus, but the stone of Pessinus had the advantage of being
consecrated by time and coming from a distance, and it was probably a
large stone. Cf. Plut. Lys. ch. 12.]

[Footnote 84: This is Aix, about eighteen Roman miles north of
Marseilles. Places which were noted for warm springs or medicinal
springs were called by the Romans Aquae, Waters, with some addition to
the name. The colony of Aquae Sextiae was founded by C. Sextius Calvinus
B.C. 120, after defeating the Salyes or Saluvii, in whose country it
was. The springs of Aix fell off in repute even in ancient times, and
they have no great name now; the water is of a moderate temperature.

Other modern towns have derived their name from the same word Aquae,
which is probably the