Grant Showerman

“ Not only were various forms of the same deity, such as, for example, Jupiter Capitolinus and Jupiter Latiaris, recognized as being really the same under different aspects, but even the gods of different nations were seen to be manifestations of a single great being. Roman Jupiter, Greek Zeus, Persian Mithras and Phrygian Attis were one. The Great Mother, Isis, Ceres, Demeter, Ops, Rhea, Tellus, were the same great mother deity under different masks (see Great Mother of the Gods) . ”

“ In all her aspects, Roman, Greek and Oriental, the Great Mother was characterized by essentially the same qualities. Most prominent among them was her universal motherhood. She was the great parent of gods and men, as well as of the lower orders of creation. ”

“ RHEA, a goddess of the Greeks known in mythology as the daughter of Uranus and Gaia, the sister and consort of Kronos, and the mother of Zeus. In Homer she is the mother of the gods, though not a universal mother like Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother, with whom she was later identified. ”

“ The Great Mother figures in the art of all periods both in Asia and Europe, but is especially prominent in the art of the Empire. No work of the first class, however, was inspired by her. She appears on coins, in painting and in all forms of sculpture, usually with mural crown and veil, well draped, seated on a throne, and accompanied by two lions. Other attributes which often appear are the patera, tympanum, cymbals, sceptre, garlands and fruits. Attis and his attributes, the pine, Phrygian cap, pedum, syrinx and torch, also appear. ”

“ Though her cult sometimes existed by itself, in its fully developed state the worship of the Great Mother was accompanied by that of Attis (q.v.) . The cult of Attis never existed independently. Like Adonis and Aphrodite, Baal and Astarte, &c., the two formed a duality representing the relations of Mother Nature to the fruits of the earth. ”

“ The Greeks from the first saw in the Great Mother a resemblance to their own Rhea, and finally identified the two completely, though the Asiatic peculiarities of the cult were never universally popular with them (Showerman, p. 294) . In her less Asiatic aspect, i.e. without Attis, she was sometimes identified with Gaia and Demeter. It was in this phase that she was worshipped in the Metroön at Athens. In reality, the Mother Goddess appears under three aspects: Rhea, the Homeric and Hesiodic goddess of Cretan origin; the Phrygian Mother, with Attis ”

“ The Neoplatonists, however, were the first school to formulate the underlying philosophy of syncretism: “There is only one real God, the divine, and the subordinate deities are nothing else than abstractions personified, or celestial bodies with spirits; the traditional gods are only demons, that is, being intermediate between God and man . ”

“ During this period, as a result of the intimate knowledge of the world's religions made possible by the gathering of every known cult of importance into the religious system of the Roman Empire, belief in the identity of many deities which resembled each other, and indeed in the essential identity of all, received a special impulse. ”

“ In the hands of the Neoplatonists it was instrumental in retarding somewhat the fall of paganism for the time, but in the end contributed to the success of Christianity by familiarizing men with the belief in one supreme deity. The triumph of Christianity itself represented a result of syncretism, the Church being a blending of the beliefs and practices of both the new and old religions. ”

“ The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community, its date frequently being the 24th of March, the Dies Sanguinis of the annual festival of the Great Mother and Attis. In the late 3rd and the 4th centuries its usual motive was the purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity, in consequence of the ceremony (Corp. Insc. Lat. vi. 510–512) . When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years. ”

“ Prudentius describes it in Peristephanon (x., 1066 ff.) : the priest of the Mother, clad in a toga worn cinctu Gabino, with golden crown and fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain. The blood rains through the platform on to the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his tongue and palate, and after the baptism presents himself before his fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence. ”

“ Syncretic, being a movement toward monotheism, was the converse of the tendency, so prominent in the early history of Rome, to increase the number of deities by worshipping the same god under special aspects according to special activities. ”

“ The Curetes are represented in art with shield and sword performing the sacred dance about the infant Zeus, sometimes in the presence of a female figure which may be Rhea. Their number in art is usually two or three, but in literature is sometimes as high as ten. ”

“ No. 3 (Madison, 1901) ; Hugo Hepding, Attis, seine Mythen und seine Kult (Giessen, 1903) ; Rapp, Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie s.v. “Kybele”; Drexler, ibid. s.v. “Meter.” See Roman Religion, Greek Religion, Attis, Corybantes; for the great “Hittite” portrayal of the Nature Goddess at Pteria, see Pteria. (G. Sn.) ”

“ The legends agree in locating the rise of the worship of the Great Mother in Asia Minor, in the region of loosely defined geographical limits which comprised the Phrygian empire of prehistoric times, and was more extensive than the Roman province of Phrygia (Diod. Sic. iii. 58; Paus. vii. 17; Arnob. v. 5; Firm. Mat. De error., 3; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 223 ff.; Sallust. Phil. De diis et mundo, 4; Jul. Or. v. 165 ff.) . Her best-known early seats of worship were Mt. ”