Editing Korybantes (section)

==Other functions==
The scholar [[Jane Ellen Harrison]] writes that besides being guardians, nurturers, and initiators of the infant Zeus, the Kouretes were primitive magicians and seers. She also writes that they were metal workers and that metallurgy was considered an almost magical art.<ref>Harrison, Chapter I: The Hymn of the Kouretes, p. 1 and 26. On page 26, specifically, she writes: "The Kouretes are also, as all primitive magicians are, seers (''μαντεις''). When [[Minos]] in Crete lost his son Glaukos he sent for the Kouretes to discover where the child was hidden. Closely akin to this magical aspect is the fact that they are metal-workers. Among primitive people metallurgy is an uncanny craft and the smith is half medicine man."</ref> There were several "tribes" of Korybantes, including the [[Cabeiri]], the Korybantes Euboioi, the Korybantes Samothrakioi. Hoplodamos and his [[Gigantes]] were counted among Korybantes, and the [[Titan (mythology)|Titan]] [[Anytos]] was considered a Kourete.

[[Homer]] referred to select young men as ''kouretes'', when Agamemnon instructs [[Odysseus]] to pick out ''kouretes'', the bravest among the Achaeans to bear gifts to [[Achilles]].<ref>Homer, ''[[Iliad]]'' xix.193.</ref> The Greeks preserved a tradition down to [[Strabo]]'s day, that the Kuretes of [[Aetolia]] and [[Acarnania]] in mainland Greece had been imported from Crete.<ref>Strabo, x.462, quoted in Harrison 1908/09.309 note 4.</ref>