Editing Cybele (section)

==Myths, theology, and cosmology==
[[File:Bronze statuette of Cybele on a cart drawn by lions MET DP307791.jpg|thumb|Bronze fountain statuette of Cybele on a cart drawn by lions 2nd century AD, [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]

Rome characterised the Phrygians as barbaric, effeminate orientals, prone to excess. While some Roman sources explained Attis' death as punishment for his excess devotion to Magna Mater, others saw it as punishment for his lack of devotion, or outright disloyalty.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=256-257}} Only one account of Attis and Cybele (related by [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]]) omits any suggestion of a personal or sexual relationship between them; Attis achieves divinity through his support of ''Meter'''s cult, is killed by a boar sent by Zeus, who is envious of the cult's success, and is rewarded for his commitment with godhood.<ref name="auto1">{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=241-244}}</ref> 

The most complex, vividly detailed, and lurid accounts of Magna Mater and Attis were produced as anti-pagan polemic in the late 4th century by the Christian apologist [[Arnobius]], who presented their cults as a repulsive combination of blood-bath, incest, and sexual orgy, derived from the myths of Agdistis.<ref name="auto1"/> This has been presumed the most ancient, violent, and authentically Phrygian version of myth and cult, closely following an otherwise lost orthodox, approved version preserved by the priest-kings at Pessinous and imported to Rome. Arnobius claimed several scholarly sources as his authority; but the oldest versions are also the most fragmentary and, during an interval of several centuries, apt to diverge into whatever version suited a new audience, or potentially, new acolytes.<ref name="auto1"/> Greek versions of the myth recall those concerning the mortal [[Adonis]] and his divine lovers,  - [[Aphrodite]], who had some claim to cult as a 'Mother of all",  or her rival for Adonis' love, [[Persephone]] - showing the grief and anger of a powerful goddess, mourning the helpless loss of her mortal beloved.<ref name="auto">{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=244-255}}</ref>

The emotionally charged literary version presented in [[Catullus 63]] follows Attis' initially ecstatic self-castration into exhausted sleep, and a waking realisation of all he has lost through his emotional slavery to a domineering and utterly self-centered goddess; it is narrated with a rising sense of isolation, oppression, and despair, virtually an inversion of the liberation promised by Cybele's Anatolian cult.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=304-305}} Contemporaneous with this, more or less, Dionysius of Halicarnassos pursues the idea that the "Phrygian degeneracy" of the Galli, personified in Attis, be removed from the Megalensia to reveal the dignified, "truly Roman" festival rites of the Magna Mater. Somewhat later, Vergil expresses the same deep tension and ambivalence regarding Rome's claimed Phrygian, Trojan ancestors, when he describes his hero Aeneas as a perfumed, effeminate Gallus, a half-man who would, however, "rid himself of the effeminacy of the Oriental in order to fulfill his destiny as the ancestor of Rome." This would entail him and his followers shedding their Phrygian language and culture, to follow the virile example of the Latins.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=302-304}} In Lucretius' description of the goddess and her acolytes in Rome, her priests provide an object lesson in the self-destruction wrought when passion and devotion exceed rational bounds; a warning, rather than an offer.<ref name="auto"/> 

For Lucretius, Roman Magna Mater "symbolised the world order": her image held reverentially aloft in procession signifies the Earth, which "hangs in the air". She is the mother of all, ultimately the Mother of humankind, and the yoked lions that draw her chariot show an otherwise ferocious offspring's duty of obedience to the parent.<ref>Summers, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|page=339-340, 342}}; Lucretius claims the authority of "the old Greek poets" but describes the Roman version of Cybele's procession; to most of his Roman readers, his interpretations would have seemed familiar ground.</ref> She herself is uncreated, and thus essentially separate from and independent of her creations.<ref>{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=297 – 299}}, citing Lucretius, ''De Rerum Natura'', 2,598 – 660.</ref>

In the early Imperial era, the Roman poet [[Marcus Manilius|Manilius]] inserts Cybele as the thirteenth deity of an otherwise symmetrical, classic Greco-Roman [[zodiac]], in which each of twelve [[House (astrology)|zodiacal houses]] (represented by particular constellations) is ruled by one of twelve deities, known in Greece as the [[Twelve Olympians]] and in Rome as the [[Di Consentes]]. Manilius has Cybele and [[Jupiter (mythology)|Jupiter]] as co-rulers of [[Leo (astrology)|Leo]] (the Lion), in astrological opposition to [[Juno (mythology)|Juno]], who rules [[Aquarius (astrology)|Aquarius]].<ref>Hannah, Robert, "Manilius, the Mother of the Gods and the "Megalensia": an Astrological Anomaly resolved ?" ''Latomus'', T. 45, Fasc. 4 (OCTOBRE-DÉCEMBRE 1986), pp. 864–872, Societe d’Etudes Latines de Bruxelles [https://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/41538820?uid=3737968&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102512423927], citing Manlius, ''Astronomica'', (trans. GP Goold,  London, 1977) 2. 439 – 437.</ref> Modern scholarship remarks that as Cybele's Leo rises above the horizon, Taurus (the Bull) sets; the lion thus dominates the bull. Some of the possible Greek models for Cybele's Megalensia festival include representations of lions attacking and dominating bulls. The festival date coincided, more or less, with events of the Roman agricultural calendar (around April 12) when farmers were advised to dig their vineyards, break up the soil, sow [[millet]], "and – curiously apposite, given the nature of the Mother's priests – castrate cattle and other animals."<ref>Hannah, p. 872, citing [[Varro]], ''De Re Rustica'', 1. 30; [[Columella]], ''De Re Rustica'', 11. 2. 32 – 35; [[Pliny the Elder]], Historia Naturalis, 18. 246 – 249.</ref>