At least it is a remarkable coincidence, if it is nothing more, that
the Christian and the heathen festivals of the divine death and
resurrection should have been solemnised at the same season and in
the same places. For the places which celebrated the death of Christ
at the spring equinox were Phrygia, Gaul, and apparently Rome, that
is, the very regions in which the worship of Attis either originated
or struck deepest root. It is difficult to regard the coincidence as
purely accidental. If the vernal equinox, the season at which in the
temperate regions the whole face of nature testifies to a fresh
outburst of vital energy, had been viewed from of old as the time
when the world was annually created afresh in the resurrection of a
god, nothing could be more natural than to place the resurrection of
the new deity at the same cardinal point of the year. Only it is to
be observed that if the death of Christ was dated on the
twenty-fifth of March, his resurrection, according to Christian
tradition, must have happened on the twenty-seventh of March, which
is just two days later than the vernal equinox of the Julian
calendar and the resurrection of Attis.
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