Editing Cybele (section)

=== 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.  -->