Editing Cybele (section)

==Greek Cybele==
From around the 6th century BC, cults to the Anatolian mother-goddess were introduced from Phrygia into the ethnically Greek colonies of western Anatolia, mainland [[Greece]], the Aegean islands and the westerly colonies of [[Magna Graecia]]. The Greeks called her ''Mātēr'' or ''Mētēr'' ("Mother"), or from the early 5th century ''Kubélē''; in [[Pindar]], she is "Mistress Cybele the Mother".<ref>{{harvnb|Roller|1999|page=125}}, citing [[Pindar]], fragment 80 (Snell), ''[[Despoina]] Kubéla Mātēr'' ({{lang|grc|[δέσπ]οιν[αν] Κυβέ[λαν] ματ[έρα]}}).</ref> In [[Homeric Hymn]] 14 she is "the Mother of all gods and all human beings."  Cybele was readily assimilated with several Greek goddesses, especially [[Rhea (mythology)|Rhea]], as ''Mētēr theōn'' ("Mother of the gods"), whose raucous, ecstatic rites she may have acquired. As an exemplar of devoted motherhood, she was partly assimilated to the grain-goddess [[Demeter]], whose torchlight procession recalled her search for her lost daughter, [[Persephone]]; but she also continued to be identified as a foreign deity, with many of her traits reflecting Greek ideas about [[Barbarian#In_classical_Greco-Roman_contexts|barbarians]] and the wilderness, as ''Mētēr oreia'' ("Mother of the Mountains").{{sfn|Roller|1999|pp=144-145, 170–176}} She is depicted as a [[Potnia Theron]] ("Mistress of animals"),<ref>''Potnia Therōn'' (Πότνια Θηρῶν) can sometimes be found as a title in ancient sources, but is used in modern scholarship for an iconographic schema, in which a female figure is flanked by or grips two animals.</ref> with her mastery of the natural world expressed by the lions that flank her, sit in her lap, or draw her chariot.{{sfn|Roller|1999|p=135}} This schema may derive from a goddess figure from [[Minoan religion]].{{sfn|Roller|1999|p=122}} [[Walter Burkert]] places her among the "foreign gods" of Greek religion, a complex figure combining a putative Minoan-Mycenaean tradition with the Phrygian cult imported directly from Asia Minor.<ref name="Burkert177">{{harvnb|Burkert|1985|page=177}}</ref>

[[File:AGMA Cybèle.jpg|thumb|upright|Seated Cybele within a ''naiskos'' (4th century BC, [[Stoa of Attalus|Ancient Agora Museum, Athens)]]]]
Cybele's early Greek images are small votive representations of her monumental rock-cut images in the Phrygian highlands. She stands alone within a [[naiskos]], which represents her temple or its doorway, and is crowned with a ''polos'', a high, cylindrical hat. A long, flowing [[chiton (costume)|chiton]] covers her shoulders and back. She is sometimes shown with lions in attendance. Around the 5th century BC, [[Agoracritos]] created a fully Hellenised and influential image of Cybele that was set up in the Metroon in the [[Athenian agora]]. It showed her enthroned, with a lion attendant, holding a ''[[patera|phiale]]'' (a dish for making [[libation]]s to the gods) and a ''[[Tympanum (hand drum)|tympanon]]'' (a hand drum). Both were Greek innovations to her iconography and reflect key features of her ritual worship introduced by the Greeks which would be salient in the cult's later development.{{sfn|Roller|1994|page=249}}{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=145-149}}

For the Greeks, the tympanon was a marker of foreign cults, suitable for rites to Cybele, her close equivalent Rhea, and [[Dionysus]]; of these, only Cybele holds the tympanon. She appears with Dionysus, as a secondary deity in [[Euripides]]' ''[[Bacchae]]'', 64 – 186, and [[Pindar]]'s ''Dithyramb'' II.6 – 9.  In the [[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|''Bibliotheca'' formerly attributed to Apollodorus]], Cybele is said to have cured Dionysus of his madness.{{sfn|Roller|1999|p=157}} 

[[File:AiKhanoumPlateSharp.jpg|thumb|left|Cybele in a chariot driven by [[Nike (goddess)|Nike]] and drawn by lions toward a votive sacrifice (right); above are heavenly symbols including a [[Sun God|solar deity]], [[Ai-Khanoum plaque|Plaque]] from [[Ai Khanoum]], [[Bactria]] ([[Afghanistan]]), 2nd century BC; Gilded silver, ⌀ 25 cm]]
Their cults shared several characteristics: the foreigner-deity arrived in a chariot, drawn by exotic [[big cats]] (Dionysus by tigers or panthers, Cybele by lions), accompanied by wild music and an ecstatic entourage of exotic foreigners and people from the lower classes. At the end of the 1st century BC [[Strabo]] notes that Rhea-Cybele's popular rites in Athens were sometimes held in conjunction with Dionysus' procession.<ref>Strabo, ''Geography'', book&nbsp;X, 3:18</ref> Both were regarded with caution by the Greeks, as being foreign,{{sfn|Roller|1994|page=253}} to be simultaneously embraced and "held at arm's length".{{sfn|Roller|1999|pp=143}}

Cybele was also the focus of [[mystery religions|mystery cult]], private rites with a [[chthonic]] aspect connected to [[Greek hero cult|hero cult]] and exclusive to those who had undergone initiation, although it is unclear who Cybele's initiates were.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=225-227}} [[Relief]]s show her alongside young female and male attendants with torches, and with vessels for purification. Literary sources describe joyous abandonment to the loud, percussive music of tympanon, castanets, clashing cymbals, and flutes, and to the frenzied "Phrygian dancing", perhaps a form of circle-dancing by women, to the roar of "wise and healing music of the gods".<ref>{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=149–151}} and footnotes 20 – 25, citing ''Homeric Hymn'' 14, Pindar, ''Dithyramb'' II.10 (Snell), Euripides, ''Helen'', 1347; ''Palamedes'' (Strabo 10.3.13); ''Bacchae'',  64 – 169, Strabo 10.3.15 – 17 ''et al''.</ref>

In literary sources, the spread of Cybele's cult is presented as a source of conflict and crisis. [[Herodotus]] says that when [[Anacharsis]] returned to [[Scythia]] after traveling and acquiring knowledge among the Greeks in the 6th century BC, his brother, the Scythian king, put him to death for celebrating Cybele's mysteries.<ref>Johnstone, P.A., in {{harvnb|Lane|1996}}, citing [[Herodotus]], ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'', 4.76-7.</ref> The historicity of this account and that of Anacharsis himself are widely questioned.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=156-157}} In [[Athens|Athenian]] tradition, the city's [[Metroon]] was founded to placate Cybele, who had visited a plague on [[ancient Athens|Athens]] when one of her wandering priests was killed for his attempt to introduce her cult. The earliest source is the ''Hymn to the Mother of the Gods'' (362 AD) by the [[Roman emperor]] [[Julian (emperor)|Julian]], but references to it appear in [[scholia]] from an earlier date. The account may reflect real resistance to Cybele's cult, but Lynne Roller sees it as a story intended to demonstrate Cybele's power, similar to myth of [[Dionysus]]' arrival in Thebes recounted in ''[[The Bacchae]]''.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=162–167}}{{sfn|Roscoe|1996|page=200}}<ref>Robertson, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|page=258}}.</ref> Many of Cybele's cults were funded privately, rather than by the [[polis]],<ref name="Burkert177"/>{{sfn|Roller|1999|pp=140–144}} but she also had publicly established temples in many Greek cities, including Athens and Olympia.{{sfn|Roller|1999|pp=161–163}} Her "vivid and forceful character" and association with the wild, set her apart from the [[Olympian gods|Olympian deities]].<ref>Roller, L., in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|page=306}}. See also {{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=129, 139}}.</ref> Her association with Phrygia led to particular unease in Greece after the [[Persian Wars]], as Phrygian symbols and costumes were increasingly associated with the [[Achaemenid empire]].{{sfn|Roller|1999|pages=168-169}} 
 
[[Conflation]] with Rhea led to Cybele's association with various male demigods who served Rhea as attendants, or as guardians of her son, the infant [[Zeus]], as he lay in the cave of his birth. In cult terms, they seem to have functioned as intercessors or intermediaries between goddess and mortal devotees, through dreams, waking trance, or ecstatic dance and song. They include the armed [[Kouretes|Curetes]], who danced around Zeus and clashed their shields to amuse him; their supposedly Phrygian equivalents, the youthful [[Corybantes]], who provided similarly wild and martial music, dance and song; and the [[dactyl (mythology)|dactyls]] and [[Telchines]], magicians associated with metalworking.<ref>{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=171-172}} (and notes 110 – 115), 173.</ref>

=== Cybele and Attis ===
{{main|Attis}}
[[File:Attis Altieri Chiaramonti Inv1656.jpg|thumb|upright|Roman Imperial Attis wearing a Phrygian cap and performing a cult dance]]
Cybele's major mythographic narratives attach to her relationship with Attis, who is described by ancient Greek and Roman sources and cults as her youthful consort, and as a Phrygian deity. In Phrygia, "Attis" was not a deity, but both a commonplace and priestly name, found alike in casual graffiti, the dedications of personal monuments, as well as at several of Cybele's Phrygian shrines and monuments. His divinity may therefore have begun as a Greek invention based on what was known of Cybele's Phrygian cult.<ref>Roller believes that the name "Attis" was originally associated with the Phrygian Royal family and inherited by a Phrygian priesthood or theocracy devoted to the Mother Goddess, consistent with Attis' mythology as deified servant or priest of his goddess. Greek cults and Greek art associate this "Phrygian" costume with several non-Greek, "oriental" peoples, including their erstwhile foes, the Persians and Trojans. In some Greek states, Attis was met with outright hostility; but his vaguely "Trojan" associations would have been counted in his favour for the eventual promotion of his Roman cult. See {{harvnb|Roller|1994|pages=248–256}}. See also {{harvnb|Roscoe|1996|pages=198-199}}, and Johnstone, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|page=106-107}}.</ref> His earliest certain image as deity appears on a 4th-century BC Greek [[stele]] from [[Piraeus]], near [[Athens]]. It shows him as the Hellenised stereotype of a rustic, eastern barbarian; he sits at ease, sporting the Phrygian cap and shepherd's crook of his later Greek and Roman cults. Before him stands a Phrygian goddess (identified by the inscription as [[Agdistis]]) who carries a tympanon in her left hand. With her right, she hands him a jug, as if to welcome him into her cult with a share of her own libation.<ref>Both names are inscribed on the stele. Roller offers Agdistis as Phrygian Kybele's personal name. See {{harvnb|Roller|1994|pages=248–56}}. For discussion and critique on this and other complex narrative, cultic and mythological links among Cybele, Agdistis, and Attis, see Lancellotti, Maria Grazia, Brill, 2002 [https://books.google.com/books?id=oE8vW4BX9kwC ''Attis, between myth and history: king, priest, and God,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429091739/https://books.google.com/books?id=oE8vW4BX9kwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0 |date=2016-04-29 }} Brill, 2002.</ref> Later images of Attis show him as a shepherd, in similar relaxed attitudes, holding or playing the [[syrinx]] (panpipes).<ref>The syrinx was a simple rustic instrument, associated with [[Pan (god)|Pan]], Greek god of shepherds, flocks, wild and wooded places, and unbridled sexuality. See Johnston, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=107–111}}, and {{harvnb|Roller|1994|pages=177–180}}. Pan is a "natural companion" for Cybele, and there is evidence of their joint cults.</ref> In [[Demosthenes]]' ''[[On the Crown]]'' (330 BC), ''attes'' is "a ritual cry shouted by followers of mystic rites".<ref>Demosthenes, ''On the Crown'', 260: cf the cry ''iache'', invoking the god [[Iacchus]] in Demeter's [[Eleusinian mysteries]]; {{harvnb|Roller|1999|page=181}}</ref>

Attis seems to have accompanied the diffusion of Cybele's cult through Magna Graecia; there is evidence of their joint cult at the Greek colonies of [[Marseille#Prehistory and classical antiquity|Marseille]] (Gaul) and [[Locri|Lokroi]] (southern Italy) from the 6th and 7th centuries BC. After [[Alexander the Great]]'s conquests, "wandering devotees of the goddess became an increasingly common presence in Greek literature and social life; depictions of Attis have been found at numerous Greek sites".{{sfn|Roscoe|1996|page=200}} When shown with Cybele, he is always the younger, lesser deity, or perhaps her priestly attendant. In the mid 2nd century, letters from the king of Pergamum to Cybele's shrine at Pessinos consistently address its chief priest as "Attis".{{sfn|Roller|1999|pp=113-114}}{{sfn|Roller|1994|page=254}} <!-- Attis is therefore a form of Gallus. Or is he? Some scholarship doubts this. Expd minimally on Paris (re his character in Epic cycle, as shepherd, also as weak, effeminate, self-control and moral issues). Also Pan (shepherd, panic etc), Phrygian cap as symbol of rustic freedom from compulsions and constraints of the "modern" civilised, regulated polis and urbs.  -->