Roman men, raised in the tough and unforgiving culture of their forefathers, could not understand the appeal of this strange new cult from the eastern Mediterranean with its obsessive focus on forgiveness and peace, and worshipping some sort of dead criminal. Indeed, they feared this subculture in which ‘women enjoyed far higher status than did women in the Greco-Roman world at large’, and which opposed infanticide, divorce and male homosexuality, making it appealing to females.
