The great mother of the gods Author:Grant Showerman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. THE GREAT MOTHER AT ROME UNDER THE REPUBLIC. In all probability because the Romans lacked time and means, while under the stress of war, to construct an ... more »abode worthy to receive the Mother of the Gods, they were unable to offer the goddess a habitation of her own on her arrival in the Eternal City. But the event was celebrated with ceremonies which were no uncertain sign of the favor of her new subjects. A member of the most distinguished family of Rome had been delegated to receive her in behalf of the State; the day was a holiday, marked by a lectisternium, and a jubilant and devoted populace thronged to bear her gifts; games were instituted which received the designation Megalensia, from fj.eya.Xi), an epithet of the goddess ;27 and sodalitates were organized as auxiliaries of the new cult, of one of which Marcus Porcius Cato was a member. 28 In default of a temple consecrated to her own worship, the Great Mother was received as a guest in the temple of Victory on the western slope of the Palatine — an abode well chosen for a goddess whose intercession was to drive the Carthaginian from Italy, and in a location the best the Romans could offer as a substitute for the beloved mountain heights to which she had been accustomed. The same year, in obedience to a decree of the Senate, the censors Marcus Livius and Gaius Claudius contracted for the building of a temple. It was completed in 191 B. C., the ceremony of dedication being performed by Marcus Junius Brutus on the 10th of April, thirteen years and six days after the arrival of the Mother in Rome. The site of the temple was on the summit of the Palatine, not far from the temple of Victory, its front overlooking the valley of the Circus Maximus and its side the Velabrum. M It was probably at this time that the original...« less