358 



NATURE 



[August 12, 1897 



city was the best, and they deputed him to receive the stone. 

 The whole city went out to meet the goddess. Matrons and 

 daughters, senators and knights, the vestals and the common 

 people all joined the throng. But a drought had reduced the 

 water of the Tiber so that the vessel grounded upon the bar. 

 All the efforts of the men pulling upon the ropes failed to move 

 it. A noble matron who had been slandered stepped forward 

 into the water. Dipping her hands three limes into the waves 

 and raising them three times to heaven, she besought the 

 goddess to vindicate her good name if she had been unjustly 

 slandered. She laid hold of the rope and the vessel followed 

 her slightest movement, amid the plaudits of the multitude. 



Scipio, as he had been ordered by the Senate, waded out into 

 the water, received the stone from the priests, carried it to the 

 land, and delivered it to the principal matrons of the city, a 

 band of whom were in waiting to receive it. They, relieving 

 each other in succession and handing it from one set to another, 

 carried it to the gates of the city, and thence through the 

 streets to the temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. Censers 

 were placed at the doors of the houses wherever the procession 

 passed, and incense was burned in them, all praying that the 

 goddess would enter the city with good will and a favourable 

 disposition. The people in crovvds carried presents to the 

 temple. A religious feast and an eight days' festival with 

 games were established to be celebrated thereafter each year in 

 the early part of April. 



Before another year had passed Hannibal, after having 

 maintained his army in Italy for fifteen years, was forced to 

 withdraw again to Africa. PVom the liberal offerings of the 

 people, in gratitude for deliverance, a temple was erected to 

 Cybele, long known as the Temple of the Great Mother of the 

 Gods, so that twelve years after its arrival at Rome the stone 

 was taken from the Temple of Victory and set up in its new 

 home. A silver statue of the goddess was constructed, to 

 which the stone was made to serve in place of a head. Here, 

 in public view, for at least five hundred years that stone was a 

 ' prominent object of Roman worship. Its physical appearance 

 is described by several writers. It was conical in shape, end- 

 ing in a point, this shape giving occasion to the name Needle of 

 Cybele. It was brown in colour, and looked like a piece of 

 lava. Arnobius, a Christian writer just before the accession of 

 Constantine, and over five hundred years from the date of its 

 arrival at Rome, says of the stone : 



"If historians speak the truth and insert no false accounts 

 into their records, there was brought from Phrygia, sent by 

 King Attains, nothing else in fact than a kind of stone, not a 

 large one, one that could be carried in a man's hand without 

 strain, in colour tawny and black, having prominent, irregular, 

 angular points, a stone which we all see to-day, having a rough 

 irregular place as the sign of a mouth, and having no promi- 

 nence corresponding to the face of an image." Arnobius goes 

 on to ask whether it was possible that this stone drove the 

 strong enemy Hannibal out of Italy — made him who shook 

 the Roman State, unlike himself, a craven and a coward. 



Just when this stone disappeared from public view I do not 

 know. In directing the recent excavations on the Palatine 

 Hill, Prof. Lanciani was at first in great hopes of finding it ; 

 because it had no intrinsic value to the many spoliators of 

 Rome, nor to the former excavators of Roman temples. But 

 the place in which he expected to find it was absolutely empty. 

 At a later date, however, he found in a rare volume an account 

 of excavations made on the Palatine Hill in 1730, in which the 

 private chapel of the Empress was found and explored. In 

 this we perhaps have an account, and, it is to be feared, the 

 last account of a sight of the Cybele stone. The writer says : 

 " I am sorry that no fragment of a statue, or bas-relief, or 

 inscription has been found in the chapel, because this absence of 

 any positive indication prevents us from ascertaining the name 

 of the divinity to whom the place was principally dedicated. 

 The only object which I discovered in it was a stone nearly 

 three feet high, conical in shape, of a deep brown colour, look- 

 ing very much like a piece of lava, and ending in a sharp point. 

 No attention was paid to it, and I know not what became of 

 it." This description is almost identical with that given by 

 Arnobius, and others, of the stone from Pessinus. 



Another stone of meteoric origin was brought to Rome, and 

 there for a brief period was most fantastically worshipped. This 

 was near the beginning of the third century after Christ. It 

 came, like the other stones of which I have spoken, from Asia. 

 In the city of Emesa, on the banks of the Orontes, about mid- 

 way between Damascus and Antioch, there was in those days a 



NO. 1450, VOL. 56] 



magnificent temple of the Sun. A gorgeous worship was main- 

 tained before a stone that fell from heaven, that served as the 

 image of the Sun-god. The description of the stone is not very un- 

 like that of the Cybele meteorite. Herodian, who probably saw 

 it, says : " It is a large stone, rounded on the base, and gradually 

 tapering upwards to a sharp point ; it is shaped like a cone. 

 Its colour is black, and there is a sacred tradition that it 

 fell from heaven. They show certain small prominences and 

 depressions in the stone, and those who see them persuade 

 their eyes that they are seeing an image of the Sun not made by 

 hands." 



This Sun-god was named Heliogabalus, and before the altar 

 a boy of nine years of age began to serve as priest. Such a 

 Syrian service did not make the boy grow manly nor virtuous, 

 and when at the age of fifteen he became emperor through 

 the money and intrigues of his grandmother, and the murder 

 of the Emperor Macrinus, we have for three years at Rome 

 the view of the sorriest scrapegrace that ever sat on a throne. 

 He assumed with the name of Antoninus also the name of his 

 god Heliogabalus. To the great disgust of the Roman Senate 

 and people, he brought with him from Syria the image of his 

 god, the sacred stone, and himself continued before it his 

 priestly service with all its fantastic forms and gesticulations. 

 He built within the city walls a grand and beautiful temple, 

 with a great number of altars around it ; he repaired thither 

 every morning, and .sacrificed hecatombs of bulls and an 

 infinite number of sheep, loading the altars with aromatics, 

 and pouring out firkins of the oldest and richest wines. He 

 himself led the choruses, and women of his own country 

 danced with him in circles around the altars, while the whole 

 senatorian and equestrian orders stood in a ring like the 

 audience of a theatre. 



But now he must have a wife for his god. So he broke 

 into the apartments guarded by the vestals and carried to the 

 palace the Trojan Palladium, or what he supposed was that 

 object, and was intending to celebrate the nuptials of the two 

 images. His god, however, he concluded, would not be pleased 

 with a warlike wife like Pallas ; therefore, he ordered to be 

 brought from Carthage an ancient image of Urania, or the Moon, 

 which had been set up by Dido when she first built old Carthage. 

 With this image he demanded the immense treasures in her 

 temple, and he also collected from every direction immense 

 sums of money to furnish to the Moon a suitable marriage 

 portion when married to the Sun. 



He built another temple in the suburbs of Rome, to which 

 the Emesa stone, the god (?) was carried in procession every 

 year, while the populace were entertained with games, and 

 shows, and feastings and carousings. Herodian thus describes 

 this performance : — 



" The god was brought from the city to this place in a 

 chariot glittering with gold and precious stones, and drawn by 

 six large white horses without the least spot, superbly har- 

 nessed with gold, and other curious trappings, reflecting a 

 variety of colours. Antoninus himself held the reins — nor was 

 any mortal permitted to be in the chariot ; but all kept attendant 

 around him as charioteer to the deity, while he ran backward, 

 leading the horses, with his face to the chariot, that he might 

 have a constant view of his god. In this manner he performed 

 the whole procession, running backwards with the reins in his 

 hands, and always keeping his eyes on the god, and that he 

 might not stumble or slip (as he could not see where he went), 

 the whole way was strewn with golden sand, and his guards 

 ran with him and supported him on either side. The people 

 attended the solemnity, running on each side of the way with 

 tapers and flambeaux, and throwing down garlands and flowers 

 as they passed. All the eftigies of the other gods, the most 

 costly ornaments and gifts of the temples, and the brilliant 

 arms and ensigns of the imperial dignity, with all the rich 

 furniture of the palace, helped to grace the procession. The 

 horse and all the rest of the army marched in pomp before and 

 after the chariot." 



The reign of a foolish boy at this period of Rome's history 

 was necessarily a short one, and at the age of eighteen the 

 soldiers killed him and let the Roman populace have the body 

 to drag through the city streets. The worship of the Sun-god 

 at once ceased, and, no doubt, the stone also was thrown away. 

 The Cybele stone, however, remained an object of public 

 worship, since the quotation from Arnobius, which I have 

 given, was written nearly a century later than the reign of 

 Heliogabalus. 



I propose to speak briefly of one more meteorite whose 



