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The Lions of Kybele

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

These words are taken from a short choric dance-song addressed to Kybele. The verses are of singular interest: the epithets express the inner being of the Great Mother, as it was conceived by her Phrygian worshippers, and the local colouring is unexpectedly faithful; there can be no doubt for instance that Sophokles distinguished accurately between Kybele and Demeter. The chorus is thus of high historical value to the student of religions: we have very little evidence of such an early date from the country itself and we know even less of the relations, sentimental and other, then existing between Athens and Phrygia. The next Attic witness—Demosthenes—heaps ridicule upon the Phrygian mysteries. A century more of Persian rule may have been accompanied by a general deterioration of the Anatolian mysteries: in the time of Sophokles more visible relics of the glories of Lydia and Phrygia may have been standing, but this is a matter of speculation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1900

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References

page 119 note 1 See Ramsay, , Cities and Bishoprics, i. 1895, p. 99Google Scholar. In my innocence I once interpreted combs, balls of wool, etc., as I should have on Attic stelai: in reality, they too are symbols with a mystic or indecent meaning, unless Clement and his informers are colossal liars (see Protrept. c. 2). Even the Romans in Italy usually chose for their sarkophagi subjects with some reference to death or a future life. But in Phrygia especially οὐδὲν μάτην.

page 119 note 2 Hill, , B.M. Catal. of Coins, Cilicia, etc., p. 180Google Scholar, Nos. 106 f., Pl. xxxiii. 2, 3; No. 163, Pl. xxxiv. 10; Nos. 293 f., Pl. xxxvii. 9.

page 119 note 3 See the Orphic hymn 27 (26) to the Mother of the Gods (Φρυγίης σώτειρα) l. 8, σοὶ ποταμοὶ κρατέονται ἀεὶ καὶ πᾶσα θάλασσα and, for future reference, hymns 37 and 38, where the same extension is given to the Titans and Kouretes—in each case a result of the Alexandrian attempt to elevate national and departmental gods into world-gods by the simple process of addition. But in Kybele's case the extension may be older, for her name Berekyntis = Phorkys, , Kretschmer, , Einleitung in die Geschichte der Griechischen Sprache, 1896, p. 186Google Scholar.

page 120 note 1 B.M. Cat., Cilicia, etc., Nos. 140 foll., Pl. xxxiii. 11; see also No. 149, Pl. xxxiv. 4.

page 120 note 2 ib. No. 11, Pl. xxviii. 2.

page 121 note 1 ib. Nos. 48 f., Pl. xxx. 9–xxxi.2; Nos. 65, 66, Pl. xxxi. 7.

page 121 note 2 See Head, , Historia Numorum, p. 654Google Scholar; Six, , Num. Chron., 1878, p. 103Google Scholar ff.

page 121 note 3 See the reliefs at Euyuk and Sendjirli and numerous cylinders published by Dr.Ward, in the American Journ. of Archaeol. 1899Google Scholar: also Ramsay, , C. and B. i. p. 140Google Scholar; at Euyuk it occurs on one stone beneath the lion's paws. Compare too the white oxen of the Yezidi and the brazen bulls of Zeus Atabyrios in Rhodes.

page 122 note 1 Clement's Protreptikos Logos, c. ii. I have used almost verbatim the vigorous translation of the Rev. William Wilson, Edinburgh, 1867.

page 122 note 2 The fullest ancient discussion of these beings is in Strabo, x. c. iii. See also Orphic Hymns, especially No. 39; ἐρημόπλανον Κορύβαντα αἰολόμορφον ἄνακτα, θεὸν διφυῆ, πολύμορφον φοίνιον αἱμαχθέντα κασιγνήτων ὑπὸ δισσῶν where the reference is to Dionysos, called the Korybant. διφυῆ probably male and female, a in Hymn 42, l. 4.

page 124 note 1 Surely it is most reasonable to explain in this way, as a human sacrifice, a story like that of Linos, who was exposed and torn to pieces by dogs: the beauty of the darling youth offered, which occurs in so many of these tales, points to a deliberate sacrifice of the most precious of all possessions. Or will Mr. Frazer argue that Jephtha's daughter was really a calf which symbolized a violet or a barleycorn and was only later sentimentalized into a beautiful virgin? The stories of Prometheus, Ariadne, Diomedes and Andromeda may belong to the same layer.

page 125 note 1 It may seem a far cry from Phrygia or Pontus to the centre of Asia, but the distance is not to be measured by miles. The race, which is the trunk of modern Anatolia, ramifies far eastwards into Asia and outside the sphere of religion we can trace its Asiatic affinities. The composite bow, that marvellous invention, is common to all Asia; it was introduced to the Greeks indeed from Anatolia and to the Egyptians from the Hittites, but it never advanced further into Europe or Africa. Again, the modern Anatolian rides precisely like the Turkman of Turkestan and the nomads north of the Great Wall, that is, ‘with very short stirrups, the knee bent forward almost to the withers, the reins grasped short and a peaked saddle’ (see Skrine, and Ross, , The Heart of Asia, 1899, p. 277Google Scholar). This seat was not introduced by the Turks: it appears on the town-gate sculptures at Sendjirli, and it is as different from the Greek seat, on the Parthenon for example, as is the seat of Tod Sloan, which it closely resembles, from the seat of most English riders. This community of culture outweighs all considerations of space.

page 125 note 2 See Dieterichs, in Philologue, 1893Google Scholar, ‘Die Göttin Mise.’ Under another aspect I should deduce Kybele rather from the lions. To these beings may be added the Boukoloi. In the imperial age Boukoloi, Korybantes, Titans, Satyroi, &c., appear as the titles of religious guilds or lodges, but the relation between these and the figures of saga with which we have been concerned lies beyond our present scope. See Ramsay, , C. and B. ii. pp. 359, 630Google Scholar, and references there quoted, as additions to which Professor Ramsay sends me the following which I have had no opportunity of consulting: Schöll, in Satura Sauppio oblata, p. 176Google Scholar, and Ath. Mittheil. 1899, p. 179 f.

page 126 note 1 In a village near the Murad Dagh I was struck by the sly looks of an exceeding well kept scribe: εἶνε πολὺ διαβασμένο (‘well-read’) said my servant, he knows and can write out charms which will bind the mouth of the wolf, and he makes a great deal of money out of them —on both counts a true descendant of the Pagan hierophant!