the god that these nocturnal assemblies were held; that, in fact, these meetings were scenes of revelry, and that in them poisonings and fabrications of wills were concocted. The worship thus became, according to these reports, an immoral conspiracy, and all who had taken any part in it were searched out and punished. Many were thrown into prison: some were put to death. The women were handed over to their relatives to be punished in private, and if no relatives could be found, then they were punished in public. It may be doubted whether the immoral character of this religious outburst was not grossly exaggerated, and whether the scandals attributed to it did not arise simply from the fact that it was the work of women. “First of all,” said the Consul, in his public harangue on the subject, “a great portion of the initiated were women, and that was the source of this evil.” Such ebullitions of women were regarded by the stern old-fashioned Romans as in the highest degree discreditable, and they must be repressed even by the severest measures. For a time the religious mania seems to have subsided; but in the later days of the Republic and the commencement of the Empire, the Roman matrons displayed the same rage for foreign worships. The temples of the Egyptian goddess Isis were crowded, and her priests were caressed and revered. Many women became adherents of the Jewish faith, and Eastern divinities had numerous devotees. In these cases the women claimed for themselves the right to worship whatever god pleased them. Often, in carrying out this worship, they had to break through the rules of conventionality, and they thus asserted for themselves a freedom which nothing but a religious impulse would had led many of the more sensitive to claim. CHAPTER IV. LEGISLATION AND MARRIAGE LAWS.