Yet the first oriental deity to be received at Rome was invited there by vote of the Senate. In one of the darkest hours of the Second Punic War, in 205 B.C., the Sibylline Books declared that Hannibal would be forced to leave Italy if the great Mother of the Gods could be brought from Phrygia to Rome. King Attalus of Pergamum, a friend and ally of the Romans, readily gave up the meteoric stone which represented the goddess, and in 204 this was received with great ceremony at Rome. Thirteen years later the divinity was installed in her permanent home on the Palatine, where the ruins of her temple may still be seen. The character of her worship was wholly different from that of any god hitherto known at Rome, and the citizens must have been greatly shocked when they first beheld it; Phrygian priests dancing and mutilating themselves furnished an appalling contrast to the sober ritual of the state. So offensive were these performances that no Roman was allowed to become a priest of the goddess until after the close of the Republic. Only on April 4 did a state official—the city praetor—offer sacrifice in the temple of the goddess, and on this same day sodalities formed among the aristocracy dined together in her honor; in 194 plays were presented on her festal day, and three years later with the dedication of her temple there were established in her honor the Ludi Megalenses, which, however, did not differ essentially from similar festivals in honor of Roman gods. But the temple service was restricted to the imported Phrygian priests, who were allowed on certain days to dance through the streets to the sound of their wild music, singing hymns to the goddess, and taking up collections for the support of the worship. Under the Empire Roman citizens were admitted to the priestly offices. Yet from the first the goddess was held in high esteem, for the promise of the Sibylline Books had been fulfilled—Hannibal had been forced to withdraw to Africa, and the Roman cause had triumphed with divine help.