The devotees of these gods formed sacred communities, admission to which was obtained by secret initiation; the rituals were mysteries in which the devotee had pictured to him, or himself acted out, the sacred drama, whereby he received assurance of divine protection here and of a happy immortality hereafter. The initiate, moreover, was believed to experience a new birth and to enter into union with his god, so that he became Osiris-Serapis, or Attis, or Mithras, even as the Dionysiac devotee became a Bacchus. To the question how the comforting assurance of present safety and of future immortality was given the initiate, we can return no more satisfactory answer than we can make in the case of the Greek mysteries; yet we may get some hint from the words which the Latin writer, Apuleius, puts into the mouth of his hero, Lucius, who was initiated into the rites of Isis. This is all that he might tell: “I approached the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of night I saw the sun glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to face.”[30] Obscure as these words are, much is plain. In some way the devotee was made to believe that he, like Virgil’s hero, had passed through the world of the dead and had been born again into a new life; he had touched the elements--earth, air, water, and fire, the very foundations of the visible cosmos; he had seen the sun which ever shines on the consecrated; and he had been granted the beatific vision. Therefore he knew that his salvation was secure forever. Furthermore in these mystery religions preparation for the emotional experiences of initiation was made by means of lustral baths, fasting, abstinence, and penance; once consecrated, the devotee supported his religious life by following a prescribed regimen and by participating in frequent holy offices; degrees of initiation and grades of office marked his advance in faithful proficiency; while magic words and formulae, committed to memory, assured him a safe passage from this world to the next. The oriental mysteries enjoyed a widespread popularity, except in Greece, under the Roman Empire down to the latter half of the third century. Then they began to lose their hold in the Roman provinces before the growing power of Christianity; yet in the city of Rome they stubbornly held their ground until the end of the fourth century. The first St. Peter’s was built hard beside a shrine of the Great Mother of the Gods; there for three-quarters of a century the old and the new mysteries strove in conscious rivalry, until at last Cybele was forced to yield to Christ.