Cybele

“ I say to those foolhardy men: Are ye barbarians, since ye know not who Cybele is? Must I solemnly remind you how, when the power of Rome was so gravely threatened by that Punic commander, whose grave I saw not long since in Libyssa, the Cumaean Sybil counselled that the statue of Cybele should be taken from the temple in Pessinus, and brought to Rome? As to the priests’ way of life, some have wondered that they should be forbidden to eat roots, and everything that grows along the earth, while they are allowed to partake of upward-growing herbs and fruits. ”

“ Cybele's mother had died in that beautiful land, [Pg 45] and it was in one of its lovely gardens her body rested while her spirit soared heavenward. The little girl knew this place so well;—the orange-trees grew about it, and the song of the waterfall, near by, played and sparkled in the tones of the birds. ”

“ As soon as she was born, she was exposed on a mountain, but being preserved and suckled by some of the wild beasts of the forest, she received the name of Cybele from the mountain where her life had been preserved. She is called also the ancient Vesta, to distinguish her from her daughter Vesta, who, with her mother, is also called Cybele. But the Deity of whom we now write is the earth, and is easy to distinguish from her daughter. In several temples of the ancients, the statues of Cybele were only a piece of stone, meant to represent the stability of the earth. ”

“ Poor Atys, [1] as old poets sing,
O'er the wild mountains wandering,
Degraded from his former state,
Cybele's love now turned to hate,
With plaintive cries invoked relief,
Till madness brought an end to grief. ”

“ Pactolus, descending from the mountains in a small, narrow valley, covered with a verdure so fresh, that it requires some power of fancy to realise that a crowded empire ever swarmed on its borders. Crossing the small, bright stream, we rode along the other bank, winding up its ascending curve, and dismounted at the ruins of the temple of Cybele, a heap of gigantic fragments strewn confusedly over the earth, with two majestic columns rising lone and beautiful into the air. ”

“ With a heavy heart she took the brooms and the tambourine, and went out, hoping to get a few pennies, and bring home a doctor for her aunt.
But it was a sad day for Cybele. She was rudely sent away from the doors at which she stopped, and though she stood long before the windows of lordly houses, in which she felt were many persons, still the sashes were left down, and no kind group appeared to encourage her. So she passed on, through quiet squares and noisy streets, but everywhere met with a repulse.
What should she do? It was impossible to go home without money. ”

“ Wrought up to the highest pitch of religious excitement they dashed the severed portions of themselves against the image of the cruel goddess. These broken instruments of fertility were afterwards reverently wrapt up and buried in the earth or in subterranean chambers sacred to Cybele, where, like the offering of blood, they may have been deemed instrumental in recalling Attis to life and hastening the general resurrection of nature, which was then bursting into leaf and blossom in the vernal sunshine. ”

“ The verger, suspecting nothing of Cybele's designs, imagined that he was doing a very good office for the strangers if he could get them received into the Viceroy's palace; that he should also oblige those who asked this of him, and hurt nobody. He sought therefore Theagenes and Chariclea. He found them drowned in tears, and overwhelmed with sorrow. "You do not act," said he, "conformably to the principles of your country or religion in lamenting so deeply the departure of a holy man, who, besides, foretold it to you, and forbade you to grieve at it. ”

“ Finally in the orgiastic worship of Cybele the same religious doctrine is revealed. Here to Attis seems to be assigned the same part as to Adonis in the mysteries of Aphrodite. He is the beloved of the goddess; he is lost and mourned for as dead; he is restored again from the grave to the goddess who loved him. And in all this he appears to be the representative of all Cybele’s worshippers; for the ritual of initiation into her rites, if once again we may avail ourselves of Clement’s statements, is strongly imbued with the idea of marriage between the goddess and her worshipper. ”

“ Why don't you go home? It's a shame to be walking round the streets so. You ought to be in school, or at work, or something else."
[Pg 49]
CYBELE THE TAMBOURINE GIRL.
"I don't know how to do anything else," replied Cybele, the blood rushing to her cheeks; "my aunt is sick, and I want to get some money."
"Tush!—always sick!" replied the boy, contemptuously; "how silly! I wonder the beggars don't all die some day, they've been sick so long!"
"We are not beggars!" said Cybele, raising her head somewhat proudly, and preparing to move away. ”

“ Into her struggling heart entered a strength which comes only when weary, wrestling, honest souls turn from human sympathy, seek the hallowed cloisters of Nature and are folded tenderly in the loving arms of Mother Cybele, who "never did betray the heart that loved her." ”

“ The Cybele of Art. In works of art, Cybele exhibits the matronly air which distinguishes Juno and Ceres. Sometimes she is veiled, and seated on a throne with lions at her side; at other times she rides in a chariot drawn by lions. She wears a mural crown, that is, a crown whose rim is carved in the form of towers and battlements. Rhea is mentioned by Homer (Iliad, 15, 187) as the consort of Cronus.
Illustrative. Byron's figure likening Venice to Cybele, Childe Harold, 4, 2, "She looks a sea-Cybele, fresh from ocean," etc. Also Milton's Arcades, 21. ”

“ On the twenty-second day of March, a pine-tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity. The duty of carrying the sacred tree was entrusted to a guild of Tree-bearers. The trunk was swathed like a corpse with woollen bands and decked with wreaths of violets, for violets were said to have sprung from the blood of Attis, as roses and anemones from the blood of Adonis; and the effigy of a young man, doubtless Attis himself, was tied to the middle of the stem. ”

“ Acquaintance and intercourse are best suited for those who are of equal rank." Cybele could hardly restrain herself at this intelligence. She betrayed, by her countenance, evident marks of the joy she felt at hearing that Chariclea was the sister of Theagenes, concluding that she would now be no obstacle to the amorous designs of her mistress.
"Fair youth," said she, "you will have different sentiments of Arsace when you are acquainted with her. She condescends, and accommodates herself to every kind of fortune. ”

“ Moore says of the singing chaplains with soprano voices, who say mass at the altars of Loretto, is true enough, and may perhaps have been originally borrowed from the Pagan celebration of the rites of Cybele. [164] When Christianity was young, and weak, and tender, and unsupported by erudition, dreadful mistakes and errors easily crept in: the heathen converts hearing much of Mater Dei, confounded her idea with that of their Mater Deorum; and we were shewn, among the rarities of Rome, a bronze Madonna, with a tower on her head, exactly as Cybele is represented. ”

“ After Cybele had toasted a bit of bread, and given it, with the tea, to the aunt—had received the kind kiss, and saw her close her eyes—she thought she slept, and new courage filled her heart; she began to think of the pleasant people [Pg 52] she should see to-morrow. What a kind crowd she drew about her! They looked on her with loving eyes, and the sweet smiles played about their lips. There were the groups of pretty children, in gay frocks and rosy cheeks, which should gather about the parlor-window, when she should stop before it and strike the tambourine with her hand ”

“ The expectation of a merry bout brought others to the floor, and even the guidman and guidwife of Cairnkibbie, themselves, rose and "buckled to the wark," as cleverly as the youngest gipsy of the whole assembly. Then up blew the "Hunts o' Cheviot," in the quickest of Tam's ale-inspired manner, and away banged the jolly gaberlunzie, as if the spirit of Cybele's priests had seized his heart; "and like a lyon lap," as if he would have foreleeted Lightfute himself, and "counterfeited Frans." He clapped his hands, till the echoes came back from the roof; and the exhilarating hoogh! hoogh! ”

“ But Cybele's aunt had taken the little girl with her to this distant land, and the child could no longer go and weep over the grave where her mother's body had been laid; but her heart was there—it could not forget. She dreamed of it in the long nights; and, when she played upon her tambourine, the remembrance inspired her notes, making people love to listen to her.
Away down in an uncomfortable, out-of-the-way part of the city dwell a great many poor people, who have come from distant countries to find here some bread, which may keep them from starving. ”

“ She knew that Arsace could not brook a much longer delay. She had already experienced the violence of her temper, which was now inflamed by the ardour of her present passion. She was daily demanding the fulfilment of her promise, which Cybele put off on various pretences; sometimes saying, that the youth's inclinations towards her were chilled by his timidity—at others, feigning that some indisposition had attacked him. At length, when nearly a week had ineffectually elapsed, and the princess had admitted Chariclea to more than one interview ”

“ And all the while the battery of round blue 74 eyes gazed on unwinking; the poet’s dewlaps quivered with stored emotion, and the spellbound audience breathed as people breathe when the hostess at table attempts to smooth over a bad break by her husband.
“Is that life?” whispered Cybele to Lethbridge, her sensitive mouth aquiver. “Did the author actually know such people? Do you? Is conscience really only an attitude? Is instinct the only guide? ”

“ Some suppose that Isis and Cybele were the same Divinity, and that the Galli, or priests of Cybele, attended the rites of their Goddess under the name of Isis. It seems clear, from the present passage, that the priests of Cybele, who were called Galli, did perform the rites of Isis, but there is abundant proof that these were considered as distinct Deities. In imitation of the Corybantes, the original priests of Cybele, they performed her rites to the sound of pipes and tambourines, and ran to and fro in a frenzied manner. ”

“ As Cybelé could do nothing with her rites, his son took him again to Aegina and forcibly made him lie one night in the temple of Asclepius, the God of Healing, but before daylight there he was to be seen at the gate of the tribunal. Since then we let him go out no more, but he escaped us by the drains or by the skylights, so we stuffed up every opening with old rags and made all secure; then he drove short sticks into the wall and sprang from rung to rung like a magpie. Now we have stretched nets all round the court and we keep watch and ward. ”

“ Cybele, the thong relaxing from a lion-haled yoke,
Said, aleft the goad addressing to the foe that awes the flocks—
"Come, a service; haste, my brave one; let a fury the madman arm,
Let a fury, a frenzy prick him to return to the wood again,
80 This is he my hest declineth, the unheedy, the runaway.
From an angry tail refuse not to abide the sinewy stroke,
[Pg 53] To a roar let all the regions echo answer everywhere,
On a nervy neck be tossing that uneasy tawny mane." ”

“ Turn to the south, there are the pines of Crete,
And, hark! the frantic Coribantes [141] shout130
To Cybele, the mother of the gods,
Drawn, by gaunt lions, in her car: they move
In stern subjection, and with foot-fall slow,
[162] And shaggy necks hung down, though their red eyes134
Flash fire beneath; silent and slow they pace.
'Mid cymbals, shouts, and songs, and clashing swords,
Pipes, and the dissonance of brazen drums,
She bears aloft her calm brow, turreted.
JOHN.
Oh, pomp of proud and dire idolatry! ”

“ Gæa (Ge) , the Mother Earth, wife of Uranus, belongs to the older order of gods; so also, another goddess of the earth, Rhea, the wife of Cronus and mother of Jupiter. In Phrygia, Rhea became identified with Cybele, whose worship, as mother of the gods, was at a later period introduced into Rome. The Greek mother, Rhea, was attended by the Curetes; the Phrygian mother by the Corybantes, who celebrated her orgies with enthusiastic din of trumpets, drums, and cymbals. Cybele presided over mountain fastnesses and fortified places. ”

“ One of these archaic Cybele reliefs, brought from Piræus to the National Museum in Athens, shows the goddess with her lion in her lap, her cymbals in her hand. The “new theology,” fostered by Euripides and domiciled in daily life by the “New Comedy,” could treat these cymbals as typical of “a creed out-worn.” One of Menander’s characters exclaims:—
“No god, my wife, saves one man through another’s help,
For if a human being can by cymbals’ clash
Deflect the god to whatsoever is desired,
Then greater than the god is he that doeth this.” ”

“ The legend and tone of the Cybele worship naturally linked her with others sprung from the same region, such as the Syrian goddess, Celestial Venus, and Bellona.2871 Fanaticism, self-mutilation, expiation by blood, were the common bond between them. The fierce goddess of Cappadocia, who had visited Sulla in a dream, was probably first introduced to Roman devotion in his time. ”

“ The myths of Marsyas and Hyagnis, the reputed inventors of the flute, gather round the same region, and are doubtless connected with the use of that instrument in the orgiastic worship of Cybele (cf. Dict. Biogr. art. Marsyas) . The Phrygian language was Indo-European, as appears from the extant inscriptions (Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. App. p. 666) ; and the worship of Cybele has been thought to be also Indo-European ”