Her priests followed her and paced the
streets to the sound of fifes and cymbals, clad in oriental fashion,
and begging from door to door.
Later, Italy was filled with Chaldean sorcerers. The mass of the
people were not the only ones to believe in these diviners. When the
Cimbri menaced Rome (104), Martha, a prophetess of Syria, came to the
Senate to offer it victory over the barbarians; the Senate drove her
out, but the Roman women brought her to the camp, and Marius, the
general in chief, kept her by him and consulted her to the end of the
war. Sulla, likewise, had seen in vision the goddess of Cappadocia and
it was on her advice that he took his way to Italy.
=Sceptics.=--Not only priests and diviners came to Rome, but also
philosophers who scoffed at the old religion. The best known of these,
Carneades, the ambassador of the Athenians, spoke in Rome in public,
and the youth of Rome came in crowds to hear him. The Senate bade him
leave the city. But the philosophers continued to teach in the schools
of Athens and Rhodes, and it was the fashion to send the Roman youth
thither for instruction.
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