Ostia’s world-wide trade made her a melting-pot, and her temples reinforce the point. Besides the temples of the Imperial cults and the official religion, like the Temple of Rome and Augustus, Hadrian’s lofty Capitolium, and the half-scale Pantheon, all in the Forum, there is, near the Porta Laurentina (_Reg._ IV,i) the temple of the Phrygian Great Mother, where her emasculated priests once clashed their cymbals. Near the Porta Marina (_Reg._ III,xvii) is the temple of the Egyptian Serapis, conveniently located for sailors just in from the Levant. Everywhere there were shrines of the Persian Mithras: eighteen of them have been found, ranging in date from A.D. 160 to 250. They always occupy a retired, obscure corner of a pre-existent building; they are apparently intended to symbolize the cave where Mithras was born to his life of struggle with the powers of darkness for the immortal souls of men. They are usually oblong with shallow benches along the sides, with an altar or cult statue at the end. The favorite cult statute is of Mithras slaying the bull; being washed in the blood of a freshly slaughtered bull brought redemption into immortality to Mithras’ votaries. One Ostian Mithraeum, that of Felicissimus (_Reg._ V,ix; see Fig. 10.7) has a mosaic pavement representing the seven stages of initiation, somewhat like the degrees of freemasonry. Each has its appropriate symbol: the Crow, the Bridegroom, the Soldier, the Lion, the Persian (with a scimitar), the Sun-runner, and the Father, or Worshipful Master. The cult was for men only: it appealed to merchants, freedmen and soldiers. In the fourth century in Ostia some of these were won away by another Oriental religion, Christianity. A house (_Reg._ IV, iii) with a mosaic of the communion chalice, set with the Christian symbol of the fish (the initial letters of the word for “fish” in Greek stand for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour”) may have been the residence of the bishop. A remodeled bath (_Reg._ III,i) made over into a humble Christian basilica, may be the place where Augustine worshiped in A.D. 387, as recorded in his _Confessions_. Part of the tombstone of his mother Monica, who died in Ostia, was found a few years ago in the neighboring modern village of Ostia Antica. The altar of the Mithraeum next to the basilica was found smashed by Christian wrath into a thousand pieces. [Illustration: FIG. 10.7 Ostia, Mithraeum of Felicissimus. (G. Becatti, _Scavi di Ostia_, 2, p. 107)]