We have laid little stress on the barbarous ele- ments in the Anatolian cultus, but have omitted them or passed them over lightly. Partly thisis due to the fact that in many cases they seem to result from degradation of the primitive religion, due to the influence of foreign conquerors and immigrants, and accompanied by a probable deterioration of the Brigimal people: In other cases the barbarous elements are original, and correspond to the equip- ments and surroundings of primitive Anatolian society: these might profitably be investigated with a view to acquiring a better idea of that society, but time and wide knowledge on the part of the investigator are required.
The failure to develop the higher side of the Anatolian religion is doubtless due to many causes. The country was on the highway of armies, and the uncertainty and suffering consequent thereon were unfavourable to orderly development, while the best and most spirited element in the people was most exposed to extermination under the successive foreign conquerors. Nothing is more destructive to the highest qualities of human nature than the presence of an entirely uncertain and capricious, yet serious and ever dreaded, danger. In the succession of military conquerors the inter- mixture of foreign religious elements was often brought about in the worst way, viz. through the instrumentality of a rude, brutal, uneducated, and therefore superstitious Oriental soldiery, which had received not even military discipline.
The unquestioned and absolute domination of a priesthood was also unfavourable to development. The element of prophecy, in the sense of becoming sensitive to the Divine will and interpreting it with reference to contemporary events, was recognized, but seems to have been kept entirely under the control of the official priesthood. Moreover, the succession of priests in Anatolia was largely or altogether hereditary (according to unknown rules of inheritance): this increased the cast-iron and unprogressive nature of priestly rule. If, as seems probable, the chief priest in early times had to be a eunuch, that must have further debased the | character of the priesthood. Thus there was no opportunity for the growing wisdom of the national mind to declare itself, since the nation outside the | priesthood seems to have been given over to ignor- ance and practical slavery: or, rather, there was
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134 RELIGION OF GREECE
ence Gem Te
RELIGION OF GREECE
probably no nation and no national life, but merely a congeries of villages.
IX. History AND CHRONOLOGY.—(1) Develop- ment of the Anatolian Leligion in history. — It would be impossible in this place to treat even in outline the development of the Anatolian religion. The development was different in every region, varying according to the diverse historical vicissi- tudes and succession of immigrants and conquerors in each; and the subject would thus be a very complicated one. Moreover, as regards no single region has even any attempt been made to collect and classify the extremely scanty evidence. We can merely quote a very few examples of the process.
In north-eastern Phrygia the Gauls settled during the 3rd cent. B.c. They found there the ancient Phrygian worship of Cybele and Attis. In many instances we can prove that the Gauls adopted the religion of the land, in accordance with the ancient belief that every land has its own deities, whose power is supreme there (cf. 2 K 17°). The religious types on the Galatian coins are entirely either Phrygian or Graeco-Roman, the latter character coming in later. The marriage ceremony in the one recorded instance was of the Anatolian type:* this instance belongs to the family of a chief probably of the 2nd cent. B.C., and the noble families were doubtless more ready to change their religious customs than the com- mon people ; but Gaulish tribes would follow their chiefs.
It is, however, beyond doubt that the Gauls introduced some modification into the old worship. The Gallic spirit and temper undoubtedly made some impression on the character of Phrygo- Galatic religion. For example, we know that at Pessinus, one of the chief centres, where the spirit of the ancient religion continued dominant and little affected by Hellenism until the latter half of the first century after Christ, an arrangement was made about B.C. 160, whereby half of the places in the college of priests were appropriated to the Gauls and half left to the old priestly families.+ We can, however, say little with any confidence about the Celtic element in the Phrygo-Galatic religion. That the Gauls retained the use of the Celtic language as late as the 4th cent. after Christ is certain, but how far they imposed it on the old Phrygian subject-population is uncertain.
But, when we go further back in the history of Phrygia, we find that the Phrygians themselves were immigrants from Europe, who adopted the religion of the native population. The Mother- Goddess was seated in the land before the Phrygians entered it; and mythology retained the memory of the contest between the immigrants and the old religion with its women - guards, the Amazons. The Phrygian conquerors adopted the worship of Cybele, probably imposing their own language on the mixed population. But there is no trace in mythology that the women-guards were retained in the Phrygian system; and we may probably attribute to this crisis the strengthening of the male element in the Divine idea, and the intro- duction of the worship of the God-Thunderer (Hel- lenized as Zeus Bronton) or the God-on-the-Car, Benni or Benneus,§ into the Phrygian worship.