(2) Susceptibility to foreign religious influence. —Some influence was exerted on the religion of the Greeks by almost every race with whom they came in contact. Even the despised and barbar- ous Thracians could make their Bendis and Kotys or Kotytto powerful and reverenced in cultured Athens. But it was mainly cults from the East that affected the Greek peoples during the period which is best known to us.
The foundation of this influence was always the same. The Hellenic religion, with its invariable tendency to concentrate attention on the bright side of nature and life, and to permit only reluct- antly, under mystic and half-acknowledged forms, any ritual appealing to the sense of fear in the worshippers, could never completely satisfy human needs; and more was always sought after, and seemed to be found in the more impressive foreign religions. Especially the enthusiastic, emotional, and impressive Oriental forms of religion exercised on Greece an influence which acted continuously throughout ancient history. As we have seen in B, § II, the Oriental character and the primitive Pelasgian character in many deities were fused, during the vigorous growth of the Hellenic spirit, into a new form, becoming truly Hellenic concep- tions; and although, in the cultus especially, the original characteristics can be traced in the Hel- lenic deity, yet the completed product is essentially and generically different from the Oriental type.
Thus far back in Athenian history we can ob- serve the entrance of the Brauronian Artemis, a figure analogous to the Ephesian Artemis and the Phrygian Cybele, with her attendant animals and her Amazon priestesses ; but myth tells how the invading Amazons were expelled by the hero of Athenian Hellenism; and the Artemis who estab- lished herself was the graceful huntress-maiden, a purely Hellenic conception, however much of the
primitive forms could be traced in the actual cultus. But as the youth and creative energy of Hellenism passed away the Oriental influence asserted itself more effectively, and was less modified by the spirit of Greece. Asklepios never became so thoroughly Hellenized as Dionysos, but he was a distinctly later introduction into the Hellenic circle of deities.
In all of those deities the Hellenic character is evident; but in later times Hellenism touched only very slightly, if at all, the gods of Phrygia, of Syria, and of Egypt, who were naturalized in Greek lands and cities. In an age when half- Greek or wholly barbarian kings and Roman em- perors were worshipped as gods in Hellenic cities, it was clear that the spirit of Hellenism had grown very weak.
Those Oriental deities appealed to the side of human nature which was alien to, and could not be satisfied with, Hellenism and the bright festival- loving gods of Hellenic political and municipal life. But in earlier times, as any Oriental deities pene- trated into the Greek circle, Hellenism tended to lend them its peculiar grace and charm, to tone down the excesses and the abandon of their rites, but at the same time to detract from their power to satisfy that deep-seated craving for an awe- inspiring deity. Even as late as the 3rd cent. B.C. the Cybele, who was worshipped at Athens in the Métroén, was sometimes invoked under the name of Aphrodite ;* and the first signs of the Hellen- izing of a naturalized foreign deity was the substi- tution of a Hellenic for the barbarous name.
The Egyptian Isis, the Phrygian Cybele, and many others, can be?traced as far back as know- ledge reaches, pressing upon and forcing their way into the mind and the worship of Greece. The worship of Isis was known very early in the Greek colony of Cyrene (Herod. iv. 186); for the Greeks of Cyrene were necessarily in close relations with Egypt, and doubtless Egyptians visited or resided in Cyrene, and, moreover, there was invariably a tendency in the ancients to worship the gods of the land to which they had migrated, in the belief that those gods were powerful in the land which belonged to them.
Cybele was introduced from Phrygia into the Tonic Greek colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor at a very early time, and in much the same way as Isis was introduced at Cyrene. The Phrygian traders came in numbers to Miletus, as Hipponax mentions in the 6th cent. B.C., and they brought their religion with them. Moreover, in times of danger the Greeks turned to Cybele for help, and found her efficacious and powerful; in this respect the story of the introduction of her worship at Miletus is instructive, and may be taken as typical of what happened in many other cases.
The party of the old kingly dynasty in Miletus, having been expelled, took refuge in Assesos, and were there besieged by the tyrant of Miletus. Being hard pressed they consulted the Oracle, and were informed by the god that helpers would come to them from Phrygia, who would release them and Miletus from misfortunes. Thereafter two young men came from Phrygia, bringing the sacred things (ra& tepd) of the Kabeiroi + in a basket, and approaching the wall of Assesos by night asked admittance, as they had come at the order of the god, bringing sacred things from Phrygia for the good of the people of Assesos and Miletus. In the issue the tyrant was defeated and slain, and the new rites introduced into Miletus.t Here the