The question arises, whether, and how far, the building of the Métroén implied the introduction of the ritual of the Phrygian Mother-Goddess as part of the State religion. It was, of course, necessary that in her temple there should be a cultus of, and offerings to, the goddess: it was also obviously necessary that the ritual of the temple should be such as she loved. But that does not imply that the complete ritual and mys- teries of the Phrygian deity were adopted and practised at the expense and under the sanction of the Athenian State. On the contrary, Demos- thenes* holds up Adschines to public contempt because he had assisted at the performance of the Phrygian Mysteries; and he could hardly have done so if they had been part of the State religion. Probably the public worship in the Métroén was selected and toned down by something of Hellenic restraint and order. But the Phrygian ritual was performed at the Métrodn by a private society of
* Demosth. de Cor. p. 259; cf. Aristophanes, fr. 478, Lys. 388, Pax, 10; Cicero, de Legg. ii. 15, 37.
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‘OpyeGves, and elsewhere by strolling priests and Metragyrtat; and was still despised by the edu- cated and the patriotic citizens, and discouraged by the State.*
The reason why the foreign rites spread was in Athens the same as elsewhere. The State religion, with its purely external show, did not satisfy the deep-lying religious or superstitious cravings of the people: the West turned -to the more intense and enthusiastic religion of the East. While the educated classes in the later centuries were trying to unite Greek philosophy with Oriental ideas about the nature of God and his relation to man, the lower orders took refuge in the practice of the direct and undisguised Eastern rites. First naturalized in the Pirzeus among the lowest and most ignorant class of Athenians, who filled the harbour-town with the ‘sailors’ licence,’ + those new rites, though scouted and despised by the more educated citizens, spread, and by degrees reduced the national worship to comparative neglect.
There was probably no period when Greece was not affected by such religious influence ; but in Athens the movement assumed much greater streneth through the influx of foreign merchants, attracted by the commercial supremacy and liberal policy of the city in the 5th cent. B.c.
Thus, ¢.g., the rites of Adonis were introduced before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war in B.C. 431.¢ The festival was being celebrated at the time when the great expedition was setting sail for Sicily in B.C. 416, as Plutarch mentions (Alc. 18). The rites had come from Cyprus (and ulti- mately from Syria) ; one of the female conspirators in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes (performed B.C. 412) swears by the Paphian Aphrodite ; and the ritual is ridiculed in the same play (389, 557). The chief ceremony was entirely non-Hellenic, with its vehement mourning for the goddess’s dead favourite Adonis, the search for the body and its discovery, the planting of quick-growing plants in pots as the Garden of Adonis, the revivification of the god in the garden, and the joyous conclusion of the festival.
The Thracian rites of Kotytto were satirized by Eupolis in the Baptw, and the fragments of that comedy show how ugly was the character of the ritual ; while the fact that Eupolis had Alcibiades in view in the play, suggests how far the rites had spread in Athens. A‘schylus had previously described the Edonian worship of Kotys and Dionysos in a lost tragedy ; but there the worship was foreign, though its place in the tragedy shows how great interest it had for the Athenians. The rites were of similar general character to the Phrygian ritual of Cybele and Attis or Sabazios.
Through the analogy of these cases the nature of the introduction of any foreign worship in the very early Hellenic period can be readily gathered from the associated myths and legends. The worship of Dionysos was essentially of the same kind and character as the Phrygian ritual. When it began to penetrate into Greece, through the influence of foreign settlers or a foreign tribe, it aroused the strongest opposition from the native and patriotic party, and from the government which represented the wisdom and long experi- ence of the governing class. But it won its way through its hold on the masses ; and supposed or real calamities occurring to those who had ex- pressed contempt or made open resistance to the new god were taken as proofs of his power. The religion of Dionysos was gradually accepted over Greece, and the god himself was received as the
* See Foucart, Les Assoc. Relig. pp. 80, 88, 134, 156. + voewrinn &yo price, Eurip. Hecwba, 607. { They are mentioned as common, Ar. Pax, 420.
(et OO
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153
associate of Apollo in Delphi; but in general it rested on the devotion of the lower orders and the democracy,* and was resisted by the aristocracy and the governing classes. And even that religion was strongly affected by the Hellenic spirit; and its Greek ritual lost much of its Asiatic character and some of its most repulsive features.
(4) Itimerant priests.—The strolling impostors
who dealt in religious and purificatory rites, and practised on the superstitions of the common people, have been mentioned above, and are often alluded to by the ancient writers. They generally claimed to be representatives of the old Orphic Mysteries, and to possess prophecies of Orpheus, Muszeus, and other ancient seers. formule by which they could bend the gods to their will, and make them favour or injure whom they pleased ; and this power they were ready to exercise in favour of any one who paid them. At a trifling cost, and without any personal trouble, one could gain forgiveness of sins, revenge on one’s enemies, and a happy life in the future world. At other times the rites of the Mother-Goddess, or some other foreign ceremonial, formed the engine of their power. ecstatic dances, either round the patient sitting in a chair or in company with him. Metragyrtar, etc., are common names for such impostors, and little distinction can be drawn be- tween different kinds of them. They were gener- ally of a very low class, and addressed themselves to the lower orders of the people. ment was poor, and they often carried about the instruments of their ritual on an ass.*+