Always he is young and beautiful, always the beloved of a
great goddess; always he is the victim of a tragic and untimely death,
a death which entails bitter loss and misfortune upon a mourning
world, and which, for the salvation of that world, is followed by a
resurrection. Death and Resurrection, mourning and rejoicing, present
themselves in sharp antithesis in each and all of the forms.
We know the god best as Adonis, for it was under that name that,
though not originally Greek, he became known to the Greek world, was
adopted by them with ardour, carried by them to Alexandria, where his
feast assumed the character of a State solemnity; under that name his
story has been enshrined in Art, and as Adonis he is loved and
lamented to this day. The Adonis ritual may be held to be the classic
form of the cult.
But in Rome, the centre of Western civilization, it was otherwise:
there it was the Phrygian god who was in possession; the dominating
position held by the cult of Attis and the Magna Mater, and the
profound influence exercised by that cult over better known, but
subsequently introduced, forms of worship, have not, so far, been
sufficiently realized.
The first of the Oriental cults to gain a footing in the Imperial
city, the worship of the Magna Mater of Pessinonte was, for a time,
rigidly confined within the limits of her sanctuary.
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