These primitive Italian divinities were at first mere abstractions, simple nature-powers; but later they were Hellenized and received plastic form. The Greeks and Romans had a common ancestry and the amalgamation of their religions was an easy matter. The successive steps in the process of blending the two forms of worship are historical. From Cumæ, one of the oldest Greek settlements in Italy, the famous Sibylline books found their way to Rome; and through these books the Greek gods and their worship established themselves in Italy. The date of the arrival of several of the Hellenic deities is well ascertained. The first temple to Apollo was vowed in the year 351 A.U.C. To check a lingering epidemic of pestilence and disease, the worship of Æsculapius was introduced from Epidaurus into Rome in the year 463. In 549, Cybele, the Idæan mother, was imported from Phrygia, in the shape of a black stone, and was worshiped at Rome by order of the Sibylline books. In various ways, the Hellenization of the Roman religion was accomplished. The Decemviri, to whom the consulting of the Sibylline books was intrusted, frequently interpreted them to mean that certain foreign gods should be invited at once to take up their residence in Rome. The introduction of Greek literature also resulted in the importation of Greek gods. The tragedies of Livius Andronicus and the comedies of Nævius, founded upon Greek legends of gods and heroes, were presented in Rome in the later years of the third century B.C. Fragments of Greek literature also began to make their way into the Capital about this time. Philosophers, rhetoricians, and grammarians flocked from Greece to Italy and brought with them the works of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek philosophers, whose writings were permeated with Greek mythology. Grecian sculpture was as potent as Grecian literature in transforming and Hellenizing the religion of Rome. The subjugation of the Greek colonies in the south of Italy and the conquests of Greek cities like Syracuse and Corinth in the East, brought together in Rome the masterpieces of the Greek sculptors.