Arnobius

“ That erecting of phalli and fascina, which Greece worships and celebrates in rites every year, does it not recall the deed by which Liber [2] paid his debt? Of what do those Eleusinian mysteries and secret rites contain a narrative? Is it not of that wandering in which Ceres, worn out in seeking for her daughter, when she came to the confines of Attica, brought wheat with her, graced with a hind’s skin the family of the Nebridæ [3] and laughed at that most wonderful sight in Baubo’s groins? Or if there is another cause, that is nothing to us, so long as they are all produced by some cause. ”

“ For it is not to be believed that these have no origin, are practised without reason or meaning, and have no causes connected with their first beginnings. That pine which is regularly born into the sanctuary of the Great Mother, [1] is it not in imitation of that tree beneath which Attis mutilated and unmanned himself, which also, they relate, the goddess consecrated to relieve her grief? ”