Towards the end of the Republic the mysteries of Isis and Serapis, which had come from Alexandria and had already spread through the south of Italy, established themselves in Rome and maintained themselves there in spite of opposition from the senate. Under the Empire, the Egyptian religion displayed all the pomp of its liturgy in magnificent temples and had a number of votaries in every province. The cult of Osiris, of which that of Serapis was a form, was originally a cult of the fields, like that of Attis, and the great feast which its adherents celebrated in autumn recalls the Phrygian spring feasts. The death of Osiris, whose body had been torn to pieces by Seth, was mourned; and when Isis had found the scattered fragments of the corpse, joined them together and reanimated it, noisy rejoicing followed the lamentation. Like the initiates of Cybele and Attis, those of Isis and Serapis were associated with the passion and resurrection of their god. And, in the same way, the oldest conception of immortality in these mysteries was that the departed went down into the infernal regions, where a man became another Serapis, a woman another Isis, which is to say that they were assimilated to the gods who had granted them salvation.[92] This is why on numerous funeral reliefs the dead man, who has become a hero and is shown lying on a couch, bears on his head the bushel (_modius_) which is the attribute of Serapis. In consequence, however, of the identification of this god with Dionysos, the joys beyond the grave are also represented as a feast in the Elysian Fields at which the great master of banquets presides.[93] All these mysteries conceive immortality as a descent of the dead into Hades. For them, the kingdom of the dead lies in the bosom of the earth. Those who have been initiated will there enjoy a felicity made up of purely material pleasures, or they will be identified with the powers who reign over the nether world and will have part in their divine life. It will be noticed how closely this last conception approached to that of ancient Stoicism, according to which the various parts of the human organism, dissociated by death, were to regain their integrity in the divine elements of the universe.