“Instruct me, too, I pray, my guide, whence was she fetched, whence came? Was she always in our city?” “The Mother Goddess ever loved Dindymus, and Cybele, and Ida, with its delightful springs, and the realm of Ilium. When Aeneas carried Troy to the Italian fields, the goddess almost followed the ships that bore the sacred things; but she felt that fate did not yet call for the intervention of her divinity in Latium, and she remained behind in her accustomed place. Afterwards, when mighty Rome had already seen five centuries, and had lifted up her head above the conquered world, the priest consulted the fateful words of the Euboean song. They say that what he found ran thus: ‘ The Mother is absent; thou Roman, I bid thee seek the Mother. When she shall come, she must be received by chaste hands.’ The ambiguity of the dark oracle puzzled the senators to know who the Parent was, and where she was to be sought. Paean” was consulted and said, ‘ Fetch the Mother of the Gods; she is to be found on Mount Ida.’ Nobles were sent. The sceptre of Phrygia was then held by Attalus; he refused the favour to the Ausonian lords. Wonders to tell, the earth trembled and rumbled long, and in her shrine thus did the goddess speak: ‘ ’Twas my own will that they should send for me.
Tarry not: let me go, it is my wish. Rome is a place meet to be the resort of every god.’ Quaking with terror at the words Attalus said. Go forth. Thou wilt still be ours. Rome traces its origin to Phrygian ancestors.’ Straightway unnumbered axes fell those pinewoods which had supplied the pious Phrygian with timber in his flight: a thousand hands assemble, and the Mother of the Gods is lodged in a hollow ship painted in encaustic colours. She is borne in perfect safety across the waters of her son and comes to the long strait named after the sister of Phrixus; she passes Rhoeteum, where the tide runs fast, and the Sigean shores, and Tenedos, and Eetion’s ancient realm. Leaving Lesbos behind, she came next to the Cyclades and to the wave that breaks on the Carystian shoals. She passed the Icarian Sea also, where Icarus lost his wings that slipped, and where he gave his name to a great water. Then she left Crete on the larboard and the Pelopian billows on the starboard, and steered for Cythera, the sacred isle of Venus. Thence she passed to the Trinacrian Sea, where Brontes and Steropes and Acmonides are wont to dip the white-hot iron. She skirted the African main, and beheld astern to larboard the Sardinian realms, and made Ausonia.
“She had arrived at Ostia, where the Tiber divides to join the sea and flows with ampler sweep. All the knights and the grave senators, mixed up with the common folk, came to meet her at the mouth of the Tuscan river. With them walked mothers and daughters and brides, and the virgins who tended the sacred hearths. The men wearied their arms by tugging lustily at the rope; hardly did the foreign ship make head against the stream. A drought had long prevailed; the grass was parched and burnt; the loaded bark sank in the muddy shallows. Every man who lent a hand toiled beyond his strength and cheered on the workers by his cries. Yet the ship stuck fast, like an island firmly fixed in the middle of the sea. Astonished at the portent, the men did stand and quake. Claudia Quinta traced her descent from Clausus of old, and her beauty matched her nobility. Chaste was she, though not reputed so., Rumour unkind had wronged her, and a false charge had (T been trumped up against her: it told against her that she dressed sprucely, that she walked abroad with her hair dressed in varied fashion, that she had a ready tongue for gruff old men. Conscious of innocence, she laughed at fame’s untruths; but we of the multitude are prone to think the worst. When she had stepped forth from the procession of the chaste matrons, and taken up the pure water of the river in her hands, she thrice let it drip on her head, and thrice lifted her palms to heaven (all who looked on her thought that she was out of her mind), and bending the knee she fixed her eyes on
the image of the goddess, and with dishevelled hair uttered these words: ‘ Thou fruitful Mother of the Gods, graciously accept thy suppliant’s prayers on one condition. They say I am not chaste. If thou dost condemn me, I will confess my guilt; convicted by the verdict of a goddess, I will pay the penalty with my life. But if I am free of crime, give by thine act a proof of my innocency, and, chaste as thou art, do thou yield to my chaste hands.’ She spoke, and drew the rope with a slight effort. My story is a strange one, but it is attested by the stage. The goddess was moved, and followed her leader, and by following bore witness in her favour: a sound of joy was wafted to the stars. They came to a bend in the river, where the stream turns away to the left: men of old named it the Halls of Tiber. Night drew on; they tied the rope to an oaken stump, and after a repast disposed themselves to slumber light.
At dawn of day they loosed the rope from the oaken stump; but first they set down a brazier and put incense on it, and crowned the poop, and sacrificed an unblemished heifer that had known neither the yoke nor the bull. There is a place where the smooth Almo flows into the Tiber, and the lesser river loses its name in the great one. There a hoary-headed priest in purple robe washed the Mistress and her holy things in the waters of Almo. The attendants howled, the mad flute blew, and hands unmanly beat the leathern drums. Attended by a crowd, Claudia walked in front with joyful face, her chastity at last vindicated by the testimony of the goddess. The goddess herself, seated in a wagon, drove in through the Capene Gate; fresh flowers were scattered on the yoked oxen. Nasica received her. The name of the founder of the temple has not survived; now it is Augustus; formerly it was Metellus.” ‘
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