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Mythographia

    Source Verification: Cybele

    Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.

    What the Sources Attest

    What is the symbol of Cybele?

    Her chief symbols are lions and a crown shaped like city walls. Virgil pictures her riding in a chariot through Phrygian cities, crowned with towers (Aeneid 6.784-787). Aeneas's prayer names her yoked lions and her turreted cities (Aeneid 10.252-253). In Ovid's Fasti the poet asks the Muse why lions draw her. The answer is that she tamed their wildness, and she agrees that the towered crown recalls her gift of towers to the first cities (Fasti 4.215-221). Her rites belong to the tympanum, a hand drum, played with cymbals and the Phrygian pipe (Fasti 4.181-184). Lucretius reads each emblem as an allegory of the Earth (De Rerum Natura 2.600-607).

    Source: Virgil, Aeneid 10.252-255

    What is the relationship between Cybele and Dionysus?

    Greek tragedy joins their worship. In Euripides' Bacchae, the chorus blesses whoever keeps the rites of the great mother Cybele and serves Dionysus with thyrsus and ivy (Bacchae 78-82). Dionysus himself calls the drum the invention of mother Rhea and himself (Bacchae 58-59). A later ode says the Corybantes made the drum in a Cretan cave and gave it to Rhea. Raving satyrs joined the mother goddess's rites, and the drum passed into the festival dances Dionysus loves (Bacchae 120-134). Apollodorus adds a myth: Dionysus came to Cybela in Phrygia, where Rhea purified him and taught him the rites (Library 3.5.1). Neither source makes Cybele his mother.

    Source: Euripides, Bacchae 78-82

    Who were the children of the goddess Cybele?

    Roman poets make her the mother of the gods in a literal sense. In the Aeneid she addresses Jupiter as her son, and he answers her as his mother (Aeneid 9.83-94). Virgil also pictures her glad in her offspring of gods, embracing a hundred descendants who all dwell in heaven (Aeneid 6.784-787). Ovid's Muse says her games come first in the year because she bore the gods, and they gave their mother first place (Fasti 4.357-360). This family comes from her identification with Rhea, who bore Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus to Kronos (Hesiod, Theogony 453-458). Attis is her devotee, not her son (Catullus, Carmina 63).

    Source: Virgil, Aeneid 9.77-122

    Was Cybele a hermaphrodite?

    Not in the sources used here. The idea comes from a related figure, Agdistis. Pausanias reports the local legend of Pessinus. Seed that Zeus let fall in his sleep produced a spirit with both male and female organs, called Agdistis. The gods, fearing it, cut off the male organ (Description of Greece 7.17.10). Pausanias tells this as the start of the Attis story, not as a story about the Mother. The link comes from Strabo. He says the people of Pessinus call the Mother of the Gods Agdistis (Geography 12.5.3), and he lists Agdistis among the names the Phrygians give Rhea (Geography 10.3.12). Whether Agdistis and Cybele were one goddess is disputed.

    Source: Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.17.10-12

    Is Cybele the same as Rhea?

    Ancient writers often treat them as one goddess, but not always. Strabo says the Phrygians and the Trojans around Ida honor Rhea with orgiastic rites. They call her Mother of the Gods, Agdistis, Idaea, Dindymene, Cybele and Cybebe (Geography 10.3.12). Euripides uses both names in one play, Rhea in one ode and Cybele in another (Bacchae 58-59, 78-79). Virgil's Cybele calls Jupiter her son, the role Hesiod gives Rhea (Aeneid 9.83-84). Yet the goddess Rome fetched was Phrygian, a sacred stone from Pessinus (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 29.11). This site keeps two pages: Rhea for Hesiod's Titaness, and this one for the Phrygian and Roman goddess.

    Source: Strabo, Geography 10.3.12

    How did Cybele come to Rome?

    By order of an oracle, during the war with Hannibal. Livy says a verse in the Sibylline Books promised that a foreign invader could be driven from Italy. The condition was that the Idaean Mother be brought from Pessinus to Rome (Ab Urbe Condita 29.10). King Attalus of Pergamum led the Roman envoys to Pessinus and gave them a sacred stone, which the locals said was the goddess (29.11). The young Publius Scipio, judged the best man in Rome, received her at Ostia in 204 BCE. Matrons carried her to the Palatine (29.14). Strabo confirms that Rome sent for the goddess from Pessinus on the Sibyl's advice (Geography 12.5.3).

    Source: Strabo, Geography 12.5.3

    Where Accounts Differ

    • Cybele as Rhea or a separate Phrygian goddess
    • Attis in Catullus, Ovid and Pausanias
    • Claudia Quinta: matron or miracle worker
    • sacred stone, image or statue
    • who founded her Palatine temple
    • why lions draw her chariot
    • why her priests are called Galli
    • Cybele and Rhea are identified in some sources and kept apart in others. Strabo says the Phrygians honor Rhea under the names Mother of the Gods, Agdistis, Idaea, Dindymene, Sipylene, Pessinuntis, Cybele and Cybebe (Geography 10.3.12). Euripides calls the goddess of the drum Rhea in one ode and Cybele in another (Bacchae 58-59, 78-79, 120-134). Ovid's Muse tells Rhea's grief at Saturn swallowing her children as the reason for Cybele's noisy rites (Fasti 4.197-214), and Virgil's Cybele calls Jupiter her son (Aeneid 9.83-84). The Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods names no one. Lucretius treats the Great Mother as the Earth itself, read allegorically (De Rerum Natura 2.598-643). Livy's Romans fetched a Phrygian cult object, a sacred stone from Pessinus (Ab Urbe Condita 29.11).
    • The Attis story survives in incompatible versions. Catullus makes Attis a Greek youth who sails to Phrygia, castrates himself in a frenzy, regrets it, and is driven back to serve Cybele by her lion (Carmina 63). There is no love story. Ovid makes him a Phrygian boy whom the goddess loved chastely. He broke his vow with the nymph Sagaritis, the goddess killed the nymph by felling her tree, and he castrated himself in madness, the model for her priests (Fasti 4.223-244). Pausanias gives two more. Hermesianax made Attis a eunuch from birth, son of Galaus, killed by a boar that Zeus sent (Description of Greece 7.17.9-10). The local legend of Pessinus has him born from an almond of the two-sexed Agdistis. Agdistis loved him and drove him mad at his wedding (Description of Greece 7.17.10-12).
    • Livy and Ovid tell the arrival of the goddess differently. In Livy, Claudia Quinta is simply one of the leading matrons who received the goddess, and the service is said to have made her doubted chastity famous (Ab Urbe Condita 29.14). Ovid adds the miracle: the ship ran aground in the Tiber, and Claudia alone drew it free after praying to the goddess (Fasti 4.291-344). Livy's Attalus hands over the stone courteously (Ab Urbe Condita 29.11). Ovid's Attalus refuses until the earth trembles and the goddess speaks from her shrine (Fasti 4.265-272). Livy names the receiver as Publius Scipio, son of Gnaeus (Ab Urbe Condita 29.14), while Ovid calls him Nasica (Fasti 4.347).
    • The sources differ on what Rome received. Livy calls it a sacred stone that the locals said was the Mother of the Gods (Ab Urbe Condita 29.11). Ovid speaks of the goddess's image, before which Claudia kneels (Fasti 4.317). Strabo says the Romans sent for the goddess's statue (Geography 12.5.3).
    • The founding of her Palatine temple is credited differently. Livy says the censors let the contract and Marcus Junius Brutus dedicated it thirteen years later, with games called the Megalesia (Ab Urbe Condita 36.36). Ovid says Metellus was its founder, that Augustus was now its restorer, and that the people paid for it with coins (Fasti 4.347-352). Livy also dates the goddess's journey in two ways. Her arrival falls in the year after the oracle (Ab Urbe Condita 29.14). A later book says she was brought from Asia in the consulship of Scipio and Licinius (Ab Urbe Condita 36.36).
    • Different reasons are given for her lions. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the lions that draw her chariot were once Atalanta and Hippomenes, punished for defiling her shrine (Metamorphoses 10.686-704). In the Fasti, the lions show that she tamed their wildness (Fasti 4.215-218). Lucretius says poets yoked wild beasts to her because even wild offspring must be softened by their parents' care (De Rerum Natura 2.600-605).
    • Her priests' name is explained two ways. Ovid derives the Galli from the Phrygian river Gallus, whose water maddens those who drink it (Fasti 4.361-366). Lucretius says the goddess is given eunuch priests to signify that those who dishonor their parents are unworthy to bring children into the world (De Rerum Natura 2.614-617). Catullus calls the self-castrated followers Gallae, in the feminine (Carmina 63.12).

    Sources

    Primary sources
    • Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 29.10
    • Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 29.11
    • Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 29.14
    • Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 36.36
    • Ovid, Fasti 4.179-372
    • Catullus, Carmina 63
    • Virgil, Aeneid 6.784-787
    • Virgil, Aeneid 9.77-122
    • Virgil, Aeneid 10.252-255
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.686-704
    • Euripides, Bacchae 58-59
    • Euripides, Bacchae 78-82
    • Euripides, Bacchae 120-134
    • Apollodorus, Library 3.5.1
    • Herodotus, Histories 4.76
    • Strabo, Geography 10.3.12
    • Strabo, Geography 12.5.3
    • Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.17.9-12
    • Hesiod, Theogony 453-458