A. Caelestis

The name Caelestis is explained by the title of the goddess, “Queen of Heaven.” However, while no one will have difficulty under­standing what “queen” means, our concept of “heaven” is rather unclear.

At the beginning of the Aeneid, Virgil relates the arrival of Aeneas in Carthage. He describes a magnificent city of many buildings, theaters, and harbors.

Amid the city... was a grove, luxuriant in shade, the spot

where first the Phoenicians, tossed by waves and whirlwind, dug up the token which queenly Juno had pointed out, a head of the spirited horse,... Here Sidonian Dido was founding to Juno a mighty temple, rich in gifts and the presence of the goddess.^[44]

No less impressive was the royal palace in which massive silver and gold works of art stood on the banquet tables covered in purple.^[45] Of course, Virgil could not have seen Dido’s Carthage;^[46] he lived between 70 and 19 B.C., when ancient Carthage was only a faded memory.

Who was Tanit? In other words, what did the Carthaginian mind condense in the image of Tanit?^{[47] [48] She is often referred to as “Tanit Pene Baal,” i.e., “the face of Baal” or “the image of Baal,”[49] which may mean “Tanit is the appearance (or manifestation) of Baal.” She later became a moon-goddess and in this respect the name Pene-Baal suggests that as the moon reflects the light of the sun, so Tanit reflects Baal. As a moon goddess, Tanit embodied some of the same characteristics as Selene, Artemis, and other lunar divinities. First among these characteristics is an associa­tion with the female principle through the mysterious connection between the phases of the moon and the menstrual cycle. But the moon is also the ruler of the night, during which dew is formed.}

Dew is a form of precipitation quite important in maintaining vegetable life in areas where rainfall is often insufficient. The realm of the moon, the night itself, is also a powerful mystical time which played an important role in ancient magic. “For the light of day is single and simple, and Pindar says that the sun is seen ‘through the lovely ether,’ whereas the night air is a coale­scence and fusion of many illuminations and powers which flow down like seeds to one centre from all the stars.”^[50] No wonder then that Tanit was worshipped as a goddess of fertility, of that creative moisture in which impregnation takes place and life begins. Tanit’s signs included not only the crescent moon, but other sym­bols of fecundity as well, such as the palm tree, the dove, or the fish.^[51] Already here we can sense that the association of sea and

sky, water and moon, moisture and fertilization, are references to the great universal realities of life in which the female element plays so significant a role.

Devotion to Tanit went so deep, and her presence permeated the life of Carthage to such a degree that she was called the “daemon of Carthage.” When at the height of the second Carthaginian war in 215 B.C., Hannibal concluded a treaty with the king of Mace­don, Philip V, the preamble to the oath contained the following words:

This oath is taken in the presence of Zeus, Hera and Apollo; in the presence of the Δαίμων Καρχηδονίων, Hercules, lolus, Ares, Triton and Poseidon; of the gods that accompany the army, and of the sun, moon and earth; of rivers, harbors and water; of all the gods who rule Carthage... ^[53]

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Although the word δαίμων in this sentence certainly means “god,” a better translation would be “the genius of Carthage,” i.e., the attendant spirit, guardian, and life force of the city.

spots and their city, and that ye depart from them. And cast on that people and city fear, terror and forgetfulness, and abandoned by them, come ye to Rome to me and my people. And may all places, temples, sacred spots, city be more acceptable and agreeable to ye. And may ye be propitious to me, the Roman people, and my soldiers, so that we may know and understand. If ye accomplish these things, I vow that temples and games will be established in your honor... ” Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.9.7-11, Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii Saturnalia, ed.

What happened to Tanit after Carthage was destroyed in 146 B.C.? Perhaps her cult continued in the countryside, since the destruction of Carthage did not mean that Punic civilization was totally annihilated. The Punic language was spoken in North Africa for many more centuries, and so it is possible that her cult also continued. What we know for certain, however, is that the name of the goddess who was worshipped in Roman Carthage was Caelestis, and we have reason to believe that the Romans connected Juno with the original “genius” of the destroyed city. Juno shared many features with Tanit. She was originally also a goddess of menstruation through association with the moon. Most of her functions involved presiding over the experiences of women: as Juno Inlerduca she led the bride to her new home, as Cinxia she assisted in the loosening of her girdle, as Opigenia she assisted in childbirth, as Lucina she caused the child to see the light, and so forth.^[54] So close was the resemblance between the two goddesses that Hannibal, at the invasion of Italy, chose the temple of Juno in Lacinium, near Croton, to dedicate “an altar with a long inscription containing a record of his achievements.

The year 146 B.C. ends the history of Carthage as a Phoenician city and also the worship of the Queen of Heaven under the name of Tanit. The new name of the “genius of Carthage” soon would be luno Caelestis, from which the name Juno was dropped and the goddess was called simply “Caelestis.” Almost certainly the Gracchan settlement lunonia ^[56] had a sanctuary of Caelestis, but natives in question were probably chimpanzees, it is interesting that the temple of Tanit was equated by a Roman with that of Juno. The epithet I^MQueen of Heaven” was also current for Juno, thus could Virgil write about the sufferings of Aeneas: “... why did the Queen of Heaven urge on a man... to circle through all those afflictions?” Aeneid 1.15. Similarly, Cicero could thunder against Verres: “Hear me Juno, Queen of Heaven; thou whose two sacred and ancient shrines, built by our allies in their two islands of Melita and Samos, this same Verres with an equal wickedness stripped of all their offerings and adornment”: The Verrine Orations 5/72, in L. H. G. Greenwood, LCL, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1953, vol. 2, p. 673; also 4.103, op. cit., p. 409. See also Ovid, Fasti 6.37: “cut igitur regina vocar princepsque de arum V' J. G. Frazer, ed., London: Heinemann, 1931, p. 320.) This might give us an indication why the settlement established under Gaius Gracchus was called lunoia: Carthage was from the beginning a city of the Queen of Heaven and if in 146 B.C. the evocation and the vow to build a temple to her was indeed taken, by the establishment of lunoia and the building of a temple to Juno that vow would have been fulfilled.

We have some information about the temple of Juno in Lacinium; because of the close resemblance between Juno and Tanit, and the general simila­rity of the architectural features of ancient sanctuaries, we may have an idea of the appearance of the temple of Tanit. Livy reports: “Six miles from (Croton) was a temple more famous than the city itself, that of Lacinian Juno, revered by all the surrounding peoples. There a sacred grove, which was enclosed by dense woods and tall fir trees, had in its centre luxurious pastures, where cattle of all kinds, being sacred to the goddess, used to pasture without any shepherd” (Ab urbe condita 24.3; see the English translation of LCL, Frank G. Moore, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966, vol. 6, pp. 181-183. ) This description compares favorably with Virgil’s picture of the temple in Carthage (see n. 3 above). We have already seen that Hannibal visited this temple and this visit was also remembered by Cicero, who wrote that Hannibal wanted to carry off a golden column from the temple of Juno at Lacinium, but the goddess appeared to him in a vision and warned him not to do it. Hannibal obeyed the goddess and made the image of a calf from the gold he had purloined from the column (he bored into it to see whether it was solid gold) and placed it on the top. (De Divinatione 1.24.48, LCL, William A. Falconer, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1953, p. 277. ) Like all temples, this one housed the image of the goddess, which, again in accordance with the custom of the ancients, was dressed in a robe. The robe was beautiful and admired by all; but more about that later.

¹⁴ Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus 9.2: “And now Rubrius, one of his colleagues in the tribuneship, brought in a bill for the founding of a colony on the site of Carthage, which had been destroyed by Scipio, and Caius, upon whom the lot fell, sailed off to Africa as superintendent of the foundation.” Plutarch's Lives, Bernadette Perrin, ed., LCL, London: Heinemann, 1959, pp. 218-219. the real fame and popularity of the goddess came after the time of Octavian Augustus. It was then that the temple of Juno Caelestis became a large and famous complex and that her worship spread over a large part of the Roman Empire.

Who was this Juno Caelestis, and what did she represent?^{* [57] She was for Roman Carthage basically what Tanit was for the Phoe­nician city, but with important modifications. The syncretism which had already begun in the original city progressed steadily in the Roman colony. First, identification of Juno with other goddesses was easy, and of this we have many examples.[58] But syncretization went on until it embraced all goddesses of fertility, as we can see from the prayer of Lucius at the end of the Meta­morphoses: “Blessed Queen of Heaven, whether you are pleased to be known as Ceres... or whether as celestial Venus... Artemis... Proserpine... I beseech you, by whatever name, in whatever aspect, in whatever ceremonies you deign to be invoked, have mercy on me...” After this prayer, the goddess appeared and affirmed that all the different names under which the primordial mistress of all the elements is worshipped, whether that name is Cybele, Artemis, Aphrodite, Juno, or any other, refer to the same, namely Queen Isis.[59] Thus, all divinities representing female functions, including the Near Eastern fertility goddesses, were identified.[60]}

Juno Caelestis reflected all these aspects. Tertullian mentions her once along with Cybele, at another time with Astarte, and again with Atargatis.^[61] The fourth-century convert to Christianity, Firmicus Maternus (ca. 340 A.D.), a pagan until shortly before he wrote his book, remembered Caelestis as Juno or Venus, i.e., a goddess of fertility, and in this connection he said that she was the “air.” He may have been referring simply to Hera (by that time it was common practice among the Stoics to make ar|p out of "Hpa. It seems more likely, however, that he sensed the pagan concept of the mystery of the air as “an intermediary between sea and sky,” that is, the element which filled the space created after the upper and lower regions of the universe were separated in primordial times. This separation, as we shall see in our later discussions, was the cosmogonic event which initiated the crea­tive process. Caelestis, in the mind of the pagans, became a goddess of primordial creative powers.^[62]

Considering the many inscriptions that mention the name of Caelestis and the frequent references made to her by Christian and pagan authors, we may assume that she was extremely popu­lar, as one would expect of the patroness and “genius” of “New Carthage.” Her temple, if indeed Virgil and Silius Italicus^[63] patterned their descriptions after it, must have been very large, situated in a park-like setting and surrounded by many trees. Nothing remains of it. This time the destruction came not from a conquering enemy but from the recently established Christian church. The destruction of the temple was so total that no archaeo­logical reconstruction is possible, but we know that the statue of Caelestis stood within it. Tertullian referred to that statue when he criticized pagan idols;^[64] so did Augustine, who saw the image in the sanctuary.^[65] This statue had been moved temporarily to Rome by the emperor Elagabalus (218-222 A.D.), who in his desire to further monotheism under the aegis of his sun-god, Elah-Gabal, “married” him to Caelestis. First he chose Pallas Athene as a mate for his god, “but then he declared that his god was dis­pleased with such a war-like goddess who was always armed and sent for the statue of Urania, who was worshipped widely among the Carthaginians and others in Libya.”^[66] Elagabalus then built a temple to Caelestis on the Capitoline near the temple of Juno Moneta.^[67] Thus, Elagabalus may have been responsible for offiial- ly introducing the cult of Caelestis into the city,^[68] but it is more than likely that private worship of the goddess had begun there long before. After the assassination of Elagabalus, the statue was returned to its original home.

The temple of Caelestis was a place of oracles. We are told that when he was proconsul in Africa, the emperor Pertinax (193 A.D.) suppressed many rebellions “by the aid of prophetic verses which issued from the temple of Caelestis.” A similar statement is made in the story of Macrianus (260-261 A.D.): “The priestess of Caelestis at Carthage was wont, when inspired by the goddess, to predict the truth.”^[69] To some extent the popularity of Caelestis may be attributed to her fame as a source of oracles; the early imperial age was a time when people were greatly worried about the salvation of their souls and eagerly looked for answers to ques­tions raised by the facts of life and death.^[70] The temple had priests as well as the priestesses mentioned by Macrianus and various orders of minor clergy. Augustine refers to “priests and choris­ters” who took part in the liturgy and to a “vast assemblage of people” who attended.^[71] Indeed, the shrine of Caelestis may have been the most common place to turn to in time of need. Cyprian, the aristocratic bishop of Carthage (200-258 A.D.), relates a story which sounds typical of social conditions in the third century: an abandoned child was found and was taken “to the idol where the people flocked (apud idolum quo populus confluebat), and in the presence of the idol they gave the child bread mingled with wine, because it was not yet able to eat meat.”^[72] Although the name of Caelestis is not directly mentioned here, it is quite likely that her temple is meant.

The church fathers who were active in North Africa, where Caelestis was most popular, criticized and attacked her relent­lessly. Tertullian (160-240 A.D.), a native Carthaginian, was fami­liar with her cult and referred to it several times in his writings.^[73] When he became a Montanist he tried to introduce the rigorous practices of that sect among the Christians in Carthage: he wrote a book On Fasting*^[74] in which he may have borrowed some ideas from the cult of Caelestis. At least that was the charge raised against him by Christians who rejected such fasts and considered them improper innovations.^[75] Tertullian advocated so-called “dry fasts” (Xerophagies), i.e., fasts involving abstention from not only solid food but also water. He bitterly attacked other Christians for criticizing this practice and in the process gave us information about Caelestis:

Whence it is that even they who court their idols by dressing them, and by adorning them in their sanctuary,^[76] and by saluting them at each particular hour, are said to do them service. But, more than that, the heathens recognize every form of humiliation (TOtTtEtvoippovricng). When the heaven is rigid and they year arid, barefooted processions are enjoined by public proclamation; the magistrates lay aside their purple, reverse the fasces, utter prayer, offer a victim.

In some areas, he continues, people put on sackcloth and sprinkled themselves with ashes, closed their shops and baths, kept only one fire in public on the altars and “no water even in their platters... ” What a magnificent portrait of public penance and a day of prayer decidated to the pluviarum pollicitalrix for the blessings of rain in a time of draught! Tertullian ranked it as an ultimate insult that the “orthodox” Christians put his xerophagy on the same level with the cult of the pagan goddesses.^[77] Yet his report is testimony to pagan piety.

In spite of the rapid progress of Christianity, the popularity of Caelestis remained. Her temple is mentioned as the most popular public place by the Cathaginian bishop Cyprian (200-258 A.D.).^[78] Ambrose, the bishop of Milan (339-397 A.D.), mentions her matter-of-factly in his response to the letter of Symmachus, in which that noble Roman requested the restoration of the Altar of Victory in the Senate.^[79] The religion of Caelestis was still alive and well in 363 A.D. when the temple of Apollo at Daphnae burned down. The emperor Julian suspected the Christians as the arsonists, but Ammianus Marcellinus (330-395 A.D.), the last great Roman historian, who accompanied Julian in his cam­paigns, said that the fire may have been started by the philosopher Asclepiades, who “placed before the lofty feet of the statue a little silver image of the Dea Caelestis, which he always carried with him wherever he went, and after lighting some wax tapers as usual, went away.”^[80] Some pagans, it seems, carried an image of the goddess with them much the same way as some Christians today wear around their necks a medallion bearing an image of Mary.

We gain considerable information about Caelestis from Augus­tine (354-430 A.D.), the great bishop of Hippo. He was born in North Africa at Thagaste,^[81] taught at one time in Carthage, and knew the cult from firsthand experience. As a young man he participated in the services in her temple; he listened to the choir and watched the priests. At one time he attended a ferculum, i.e., a religious banquet at which actors gave performances before the statue of the goddess which was placed on a couch as if it were to be feasted. In retrospect he judged the words spoken there lewd and the whole performance offensive.^[82] He does not say how old he was when he attended this service, but if he was twenty-one, then in the year 375 A.D. “vast crowds” were still coming to the temple of Caelestis from all quarters of the city. Not only women but men, too, came to these services. Augustine says they came out of curiosity. But how does he know that? Perhaps the service of Caelestis touched a responsive chord in the hearts of the worship­pers. Unwillingly Augustine paid a compliment to pagan piety: “There are some,” he says, “who dismiss God when they hunger in this world and they ask Mercury or Jupiter to grant a boon which may be granted to them, or they may ask the same of her whom they call Caelestis, or some other similar daemon: but their flesh does not thirst after God/’^[83] Who were these who in time of need abandoned God and turned to Caelestis? Could they have been unstable Christians? Augustine did not say, but he was intrigued enough by the popularity of Caelestis to return to the topic again. Once more he described this pagan ceremony, or perhaps another which he had attended. Again he was offended by the presence of prostitutes and did not understand how they could have a place in the service of a “virgin” goddess. The rites were so obscene that many prudent women turned away from what was going on because they were not able to watch acts so licentious. Even in the privacy of their homes, Augustine says, people could do such things only in secret. Augustine did not close his eyes to what he saw, but carefully watched and observed everything; only in retrospect did he condemn in righteous indignation what he saw.^[84] It is interesting to note that Augustine was so terribly upset by sexual inferences in connection with the "Virgin Caelestis” at a time when Christians were openly discus­sing sexual matters pertaining to the Virgin Mary. They constant­ly talked about the virginity of Mary, which they described as “antepartum, inpartu, postpartum, ”i.e., before, during, and after the birth of Jesus. What could be more indelicate than the detailed description of the condition of Mary’s hymen in the Christian treatise called the Protoevangelium of James'?^ This treatise did not upset Augustine or the Christian congregations; nonetheless, they condemned their pagan contemporaries for what they called their open lewdness.

Another practice for which Augustine criticized the Cartha­ginians was that of temple prostitution. Speaking about Venus, he says: “To her also the Phoenicians offered a gift by prostituting their daughters before they united them to husbands.”^{[85] [86] A similar custom was also reported by the Roman historian Valerius Maxi­mus, who lived during the reign of Emperor Tiberius (14-37 A.D.):}

In Sicca in fact, there is a temple of Venus, into which respectable ladies used to gather, and so after they had gone forth to enrich themselves they contracted for their dowries by dishonoring their bodies: respectable marriage, then, no wonder (is made) so dis­reputable by this obligation of the union.^[87]

Not noted for the depth of his thought, accuracy, or critical analysis, Valerius Maximus here may have misinterpreted an element in this practice: the women prostituted themselves for the goddess and not to supplement their dowry. This comes out clearly in the report of Herodotus, who says that the obligation was on both rich and poor women, and that after they fulfilled their duty to the goddess “it [would] be impossible to seduce them by any offer.”^[88] Lucian, in De Dea Syria (chap. 6), also mentions something similar and emphasizes that the money thus gained would become an offering to Aphrodite. Prostitution before mar­riage for the purpose of collecting a dowry did exist in the ancient world, but it was undertaken on one’s private initiative.^[89] Temple prostitution as a work of piety is difficult for us to understand, but for the ancients fertility and the enjoyment of it was a divine command and blessed by the goddess of love. As sympathetic magic, its practice was believed to enhance agricultural pro­duction as well as human fertility in the community. Even more importantly, sacred intercourse represented a sacramental sus­pension of sexual differentiation and a return to the primordial state of union when the sexes were not yet separated. In a proleptic way, it also points forward to the time of final restoration of the cosmos’ perfect state when “there is no male and female.” We will return to this theme when we discuss Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother.^[90]

The priests of Caelestis were not eunuchs and we do not hear about “Galli” in Carthage; Roman moderation and sobriety, to­gether with the fusion of Carthaginian Tanit with Roman Juno in Caelestis, precluded that. This did not prevent Firmicus Maternus (ca. 340 A.D.) from including the Africans in his diatribe against effeminate priests who had womanish voices, rubbed their skin smooth, wore female clothing, flaunted their impure bodies, and boasted of their depravity. What kind of divinity was it, Firmicus asks, which delighted in such unnatural human bodies?

Blush... you poor wretches; God created you other than this!... Reject this great and calamitous error, and abandon at last the inclination of the heathen heart. Do not take your body which God created and condemn it by the wicked law of the devil. While time still permits, go to the rescue of your disastrous situation.^[91]

All this sounds very much like Gibbon’s condemnation of early Christian monasticism.^[92]

Without trying to excuse the behavior of the Galli, one can wonder whether Firmicus would similarly criticize the Ancho­rites and Cenobites of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts or praise them for torturing their bodies “which God created”? At any rate, the cult of Caelestis did not include this rite of priestly castration, and Firmicus’ criticism fits only Cybele or the Dea Syria.

The worship of Caelestis continued and the temple in Carthage served its purpose. Filastrius (died ca. 397 A.D.) still referred to it as a living religion and cult.^[93] But when the end came in 399 A.D., the temple was taken over amid loud pagan protests and converted into a Christian church. Forcible Christianization now went at full speed, and soon Christians demanded total destruction of paganism. In 401 a general council was held in Carthage under the chairmanship of Bishop Aurelius, and the assembled fathers called upon the emperors to destroy pagan sanctuaries, images and relics of the gods, even the parks and gardens in which the sanctuaries and shrines stood. Even today the sancti­monious words fall heavy on the ear:

Item placuit, ab imperatoribus gloriosissimis peti, ut reliquiae idololatriae non solum in simulacris, sed in quibuscumque locis, vel lucis, vel arboribus omnimode deleantur. Aurelius episcopus ecclesiae Carthaginis, supra comprehensis in nostro concilio statutis subscripsi. Similiter septuaginta duo episcopi suscripserunt.^[94]

In 421 A.D., under the supervision of the imperial tribune Ursus, the magnificent temple was demolished and the site became a Christian cemetery. Whether this wanton destruction had to do with the pagans’ demand that the church be returned to them, we do not know. We do know that the pagans claimed that they had received an oracle from Caelestis^[95] to that effect, and we do know that soon after that, all the buildings of the complex were de­molished. Why? If, as Christians claimed, the pagan deities did not exist, why bother to destroy their idols and temples? No answer was ever given.

But the power of Caelestis was broken. Augustine reflects with melancholy upon her past glory: “What were the kingdoms of this earth? The kingdoms of idols, the kingdoms of daemons are broken... How great was the power of Caelestis which was in Carthage! Where is now the kingdom of Caelestis?”^[96] By then, however, more was broken than the kingdom of Caelestis, and Augustine knew it. The empire of Rome was broken, the barba­rians were battering at the door of Utica, and the Christian bishop there was desperately trying to exonerate the church from blame for the disaster which befell Rome. Christians were not the cause of Rome’s problems, he claimed. Constantinople was the proof because it was founded by a Christian emperor, lost its false gods, and still prospered. “Carthage remains now in its possession of the name of Christ, yet once upon a time its goddess Caelestis was overthrown; because celestial she was not, but terrestrial/’^[97] Car­thage, however, did not long survive as a Roman city. In 439 Gaiseric, the Vandal king, captured it and, among others, de­stroyed “the theatres, the temple ‘Memory’ with the passage surnamed ‘Celestis.’”^[98] At the time of the Vandal invasion there was still a street called Celestis in Carthage!

One of Augustine’s pupils, Quodvultdeus, became bishop of Carthage in 437 A.D., but was expelled when the city fell. There­upon he fled to Campania where he wrote a book in which he reminisced about Carthaginian Caelestis. Since he was an eye­witness to some of the events that he described, his report is worth quoting in full:

In Africa, at Carthage, Caelestis—as they called her — had a vast temple surrounded by sanctuaries of all their gods; its street was decorated with mosaics as well as lavish columns and walls of stone which extended very nearly 2,000 feet. It had been closed for a long time, fenced in and obscured by wild thorny thickets, when the Christian people wanted to appropriate it for the service of the true religion. But the pagan people cried out that there were dragons and serpents to protect the temple. This only further in­flamed the Christians with zeal, and they removed all the bushes without coming to any harm; with the same ease they conse­crated the temple to their God and Lord. In fact, when they cele­brated the solemn rite of Easter, and a great crowd had gathered, coming from far and wide in curiosity, the one we must call the father of a number of priests and a man worthy of our reverance, Bishop Aurelius, now a citizen of the Heavenly Kingdom (City), established his throne there in the house of Caelestis and set siege. I myself was present then, with some friends and companions, and as we turned from side to side in our youthful impatience, examining each detail according to its importance, something marvelous and incredible presented itself to our eyes: an inscrip­tion in huge bronze letters on the front of the temple read: Aurelius Pontifex dedicavit (Aurelius, the High Priest, has dedicated [this temple]). Upon reading this the people were amazed that the foreseeing God had accomplished this deed, which the prophetic spirit had inspired, by his own sure command. And when a pagan put forth a certain false oracle as if it came from the same Caelestis, which said that the voice and the temples would be returned to their former rites, then God, that true God whose prophetic oracles know nothing of how to lie or how to deceive, commanded through the present emperor, the pious and Christian Valentinian, son of Constantine and Augusta Placida, that through the efforts the tribune Ursus, all the temples should be razed to the ground and, scattering [their stones], he should leave only the fields, evidently as a sepulchre for the dead. Even the voice of Caelestis, destroyed now by the Vandals, was left without memory.^[99]

But faith dies hard, and in spite of what Quodvultdeus said, the Carthaginians remained attached to their Queen, even under Vandal rule. Not only were there many pagans who openly con­fessed their attachment to Caelestis, there were even Christians who secretly paid homage to her. Salvian, a Christian clergyman (400-480 A.D.)living in Marseilles, reflected upon this situation in Africa and complained that many “so-called” Christians went to the service of Caelestis before or after the Christian worship service. It would have been better, he says, if these Christians had not come at all, because then they would be guilty only of negligence, but this way they were guilty of sacrilege.^[100] Slowly, however, the memory of Caelestis faded, as did the cults of other divine queens in other parts of what was and what remained of the Roman Empire.