Finally, the Roman festival closed on the
twenty-seventh of March with a procession to the brook Almo. The
silver image of the goddess, with its face of jagged black stone,
sat in a waggon drawn by oxen. Preceded by the nobles walking
barefoot, it moved slowly, to the loud music of pipes and
tambourines, out by the Porta Capena, and so down to the banks of
the Almo, which flows into the Tiber just below the walls of Rome.
There the high-priest, robed in purple, washed the waggon, the
image, and the other sacred objects in the water of the stream. On
returning from their bath, the wain and the oxen were strewn with
fresh spring flowers. All was mirth and gaiety. No one thought of
the blood that had flowed so lately. Even the eunuch priests forgot
their wounds.
Such, then, appears to have been the annual solemnisation of the
death and resurrection of Attis in spring. But besides these public
rites, his worship is known to have comprised certain secret or
mystic ceremonies, which probably aimed at bringing the worshipper,
and especially the novice, into closer communication with his god.
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