If that was so, there can be no
intrinsic improbability in the conjecture that motives of the same
sort may have led the ecclesiastical authorities to assimilate the
Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to the
festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god which
fell at the same season. Now the Easter rites still observed in
Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy bear in some respects a striking
resemblance to the rites of Adonis, and I have suggested that the
Church may have consciously adapted the new festival to its heathen
predecessor for the sake of winning souls to Christ. But this
adaptation probably took place in the Greek-speaking rather than in
the Latin-speaking parts of the ancient world; for the worship of
Adonis, while it flourished among the Greeks, appears to have made
little impression on Rome and the West. Certainly it never formed
part of the official Roman religion. The place which it might have
taken in the affections of the vulgar was already occupied by the
similar but more barbarous worship of Attis and the Great Mother.
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