Bringing Their Mother Home: Roman Multiculturalism and the Mother of the Gods

Bringing Their Mother Home examines the worship of the Greco-Phrygian goddess Cybele, known as the Magna Mater in Rome, to understand the ways that the mid- to late-Roman Republic constructed and performed a multicultural, multiethnic identity. The goddess, originally worshiped in ancient Turkey, was brought by the Romans to their city in 204 BCE and renamed the Magna Mater (the Great Mother). Previous scholarship contended that the Romans feared and hated the goddess and her followers beca...