It is difficult for us now to appreciate the widespread influence of these Eleusinian mysteries. They had many branches; at Eleusis they continued to be celebrated until 396 A.D., when Alaric the Goth destroyed Demeter’s ancient shrine. Other Greek mysteries also flourished in the Mediterranean world: those of Samothrace; the mysteries of Bacchus, whose excesses brought down the displeasure of the Roman Senate in 186 B.C.; and in later times the mysteries of Hecate or Diana. All had this in common, that they gave the initiate assurance of a happy immortality. Under the Roman Empire the longing for religious satisfaction through mystic rites and revelations found new and exotic sources of gratification. Slaves, traders, and finally soldiers from Hellenized Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, carried their gods throughout the Mediterranean world, and even beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean, to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, to the Rhine and Danube, and to the borders of the African desert. The invasion of the West by these oriental gods began in 204 B.C., when, in answer to the Roman Senate’s invitation, the Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods took up her residence in Rome. Many other divinities came during the succeeding centuries; but three remained most prominent: the Great Mother of the Gods, whom I have just mentioned, with her attendant Attis; Egyptian Isis and her associate divinities, who were worshipped in Rome as early as Cicero’s day; and the Persian Mithras, whose cult became influential in the West toward the close of the first century of our era.[29] These religions added to their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s imaginations. Osiris, the husband of Isis, had been lord of the dead in Egypt for more than two thousand years; Attis and the Great Mother belonged to an immemorial antiquity; while Mithras had his origin in the remoter East, at a period to which neither Greek nor Roman knowledge ran. Moreover, Attis and Osiris, like Dionysus and Persephone among the Greeks, or the Semitic Adonis and Tammuz, were gods who died and lived again, and who therefore became warrants of man’s immortality. Mithras belonged to another class of divinities. He was held to be the benefactor and constant supporter of mankind. According to the sacred legend, he had himself wrestled with the powers of darkness and had established civilization on earth, before he ascended to heaven, whence he was believed to aid his faithful followers in their constant struggle against the servants of Ahriman, the lord of wickedness.