268 RELIGION AND E D U C A T I O'N x sentation is from its original and from the sacred atmosphere of the cult. The cas'e of DIognetos, who had been one of the Hendeka^ the famous police commissioners, and then became a temple~robber3 may not have been typical, although grave- robbers seem not to have been altogether rare.1 It is, in fact, not In incidental misdeeds or even crimes that the decisive weakening of religiosity shows itself, but in a fundamental change of mmd.2 Mainly because of the general movement of religious senti- ment foreign cults penetrated Athens, or rather the Peiraeus, at this time in ever-growing numbers.3 Among them that of the Thracian goddess Bendis was probably the first and was even officially accepted, others were those of the Phrygian god Sabazios, the Great Mother and her lover Attis, and, above all, Adonis.4 His festival could be mentioned in the same breath with those of Demeter and Zeus 5 Eupolis, in the Baptai) attacked Alkibiades and his friends for taking part in the orgies of the goddess Kotytto, a Thracian deity to whose worship the poet ascribes all kinds of magical actions as well as debauchery.6 It has been shown that this description is probably largely fancy and that perhaps no cult of Kotytto ever existed in Athens, though there was one in Corinth.7 Such criticism would make any facts mentioned by Eupolis rather doubtful, but in all comic exaggeration and fancy there would still be reflected the general impact which this kind of foreign cult and its orgiastic rituals made on Greek life. Hyes, a comic substitute either for the rain-god Zeus or for Dionysos as the god of moisture, could be called a foreigner.8 Another goddess who found adherents even among important people 1 Eupolis 40 P, 95^ - Eur Me&itfof - Sometimes an ancient ntual disappeared, because general views on morality overcame religious conservatism. Thus, it seems, the method of purification by destroying a cnmmal as a scapegoat for the whole people was no longer used (F-733, c£ Hipponax 7 Lhehl). The human scapegoat was called