Marcus Aurelius, to join him in the propagation of his new cult and even to marry his daughter[97]. But the worship that he thus set up must have afterwards been recognized by the city of Nicomedia, for we find the representation of its god Glycon upon a Nicomedian coin of the time of the Emperor Gordian, the husband of Tranquillina[98]. It was apparently in these associations that the new spirit now manifest in the religion of the ancient world began to take organized shape. Among the Persians and Egyptians the priests were officers of state living on the property of their several corporations, and therefore with a natural leaning, except in the rare cases where their privileges or property were threatened by the Crown, against all innovations and interference with the established order of things. Among the Greeks, both in Hellas itself and in her colonies oversea, the priests with a very few exceptions were chosen from the native-born citizens at large either for their personal beauty, or for the wealth which enabled them to give in honour of the gods magnificent pageants and other festivals[99]. In no case did they regard themselves as having any teaching or pastoral mission, and were in no way interested in increasing the number of the worshippers of the god to whose service they were elected for a short term. Hence, their chief preoccupation was to keep strictly to precedent in the celebration of the public acts of worship entrusted to them, and they would have looked with horror on any alteration of the traditional rites. But in the associations founded for the worship of foreign gods, affairs were conducted on utterly different lines. There seems to have been a healthy spirit of emulation among the successive holders of the priestly office, for the vote of thanks inscribed on marble and displayed in the temple for the admiration of the confraternity was the distinction most sought after by them, and the deprivation of it was the most serious penalty exacted for dereliction of duty[100]. In order to obtain these rewards, it is plain that the officers had to carry out to the full the Apostolic injunction to be all things to all men, and there is actually a case on record where a priestess is praised because during her term of office she has offended nobody. This complaisance seems to have extended itself from the officials to the deities worshipped, who seem often to have been quite willing to fulfil a double office, and to appear as Aphrodite or Astarte to the Syrian and as Cybele to the Phrygian members of the association[101]. By these means, they made it possible for several nationalities to belong to the same association.