wisdom armed the goddess and the Romans

After the Fall of the Temple, the goddess religion persisted in many forms. It remained in areas unaffected by the newer civilization; it remained in popular myths and customs, and it continued in covert forms within the new state religion. In The Goddess and the Greeks we saw that the goddess was a major part of Hellenic culture, even though the new god Apollo had taken some of her attributes and duties. In Italy, history took a similar course. The pre-Roman culture, which we now call Etruscan, was a goddess culture, with a grove and lake centre of worship at Nemi. As Rome rose in power, so did the male war god Mars. The principal face of the goddess became Minerva, the Roman equivalent of Athena. The observing of the important calendrical ceremonies continued, including the practice of human sacrifice. It was this practice which led to the Romans proscribing certain cults, though it was not the only reason.

In the commentaries of Lucius Apuleius (2nd Century AD, at the beginning of the Christian period) on the goddess in his times, some of these reasons are given.. In "Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass" Lucius maps for us the state of religion...briefly the story of the Golden Ass is: A young man ignores the warnings of his good aunt, who is wise in goddess lore, not to involve himself with a certain witch, but he does. .......turned into an ass he wanders throughout Greece and Anatolia. Eventually he is released from the spell by the goddess herself, in the form of Isis. Lucius shows that there were good and bad goddess believers; he reveals a great deal of the goddess lore (his is the best telling of the myth of Eros and Psyche, which contains advice for young women on the ways of the world). We also learn that certain goddess cults which emphasized the carnal aspect of the goddess were outlaws at that time. Lucius is an example of a goddess-servant of high intellectual attainment trying to defend and preserve goddess lore while a proto-Christian movement was applied throughout the Roman empire, which he did without converting to the new order himself. Others with knowlege from the goddess temple took a different course, such as the Christian scholar known by the Latinised name Firmicus Maternus (c.350). His De nativitatibus, a defence of astrology, signals that his deep learning came from the temples.

From Firmicus' time forward, temple lore was suspect and dangerous knowledge, and those that knew of it were circumspect in sharing it.