CYBELE. - Under the name Κυβέλη, Κυβήβη, Κυβηλίς and similar forms, there appears in Greece, as early as the times of Hipponax of Ephesus and of Pindar, who are the first to mention her, a goddess who continued to live in the Hellenic consciousness as a divinity of Phrygian origin. Under such a name, in fact, a goddess was worshipped in Phrygia (Asia Minor), and more precisely in the city of Pessinus, at the foot of Mount Agdus and near the rivers Gallus and Sangarius. This is not, however, a divinity originating with the Phrygian people. This people, which, coming probably from the Balkan peninsula, where it had lived together with the Thracian people, invaded, perhaps around the 12th century B.C., the territory later called Phrygia, found in its new homeland the powerful cult of a female divinity, conceived as a universal mother: indeed, not only in Phrygia, but throughout the Anatolian sphere there are found analogous mother-goddesses, such as, for example, also the Mâ of Comana or the goddess of Ephesus, identified by the Greeks with Artemis.
The particulars of this pre-Phrygian phase of the cult are unknown. It is linked, in any case, to the indigenous population of the eastern Mediterranean zone. The goddess is called here by various names meaning "mamma" (Ma, Nana, etc.) or by adjectives derived from the name of the locality, more precisely of the mountain on which she has a cult seat: thus are explained the names Dindymene, Sipylene, Idaia and, probably, Kybele itself. A goddess of the mountains, she is also, perhaps through Babylonian influence mediated by the Hittites, a goddess of wild beasts. In the cities, seats of her cult, she exercises the protective functions of a city divinity.
These traits, whose pre-Phrygian origin may be supposed, are broadened under the influence of the religious fervor of the Phrygians. Beside the figure of the Great Mother of Pessinus, there now appears that of a god, Attis, whose name means father. The myth speaks of an androgynous divinity, Agdistis, born from the rocks of Mount Agdus. To subdue her unbridled and indomitable nature, the gods deprive her of the male sex. From her blood is born a tree, whose fruit fertilizes Nana, daughter of King Sangarius: she thus becomes the mother of Attis. Of this Attis it is learned, meanwhile, that he was a shepherd, loved by Agdistis. When the Phrygian king Midas wishes to give him his daughter in marriage, the goddess appears at the wedding and instills a religious frenzy in those present. Among these Attis himself emasculates himself and dies; but Zeus, at the goddess's prayer, grants him a kind of immortality: his little finger will continue to move. The myth thus motivates the practice of self-emasculation among the priests of the common cult of C. and Attis - priests whose name always remains "galli" in connection with the river Gallus of Pessinus - and expresses the whole ideology of the orgiastic cult and of the aspiration to immortality proper to Phrygian religiosity.
The independent Phrygian state is then submerged by the expansion of other peoples: thus, in the second half of the 7th century B.C., by the Lydians. Pessinus nevertheless remains an independent theocratic city-state, that is, administered by the priests under the sovereignty of the goddess. At the same time the cult spreads into Lydia, where there are found theophoric names (e.g., Alyattes) in the ruling family and other signs of a fervent cult of the Great Mother. Elements of Lydian mythology demonstrate, however, how the Lydians were always conscious of the Phrygian origin of the cult.
Through continuous contacts with the peoples of Asia Minor and by means of numerous Phrygian slaves, the cult of C. penetrates early (5th century B.C.) also into mainland Greece. It leans upon Greek cults: C., in fact, is assimilated to various Greek mother-goddesses, such as Gaia, Demeter, and, above all, Rhea. The bloody, savage and orgiastic forms of the cult, of a mystery character, of Attis are however repugnant to Hellenic sensibility: the Greek comic poets speak of it with contempt, ironizing above all over the mendicant priestly order of the metragyrtai. Beginning from the end of the 5th century B.C., Greece comes to know, however, also the practice of self-emasculation, and from the 4th century there exists, at Piraeus, a cultural association of orgeones, initiates of the mystery cult. There is mention also of the spring festivals in honor of the two divinities, the Attideia. Not only that, but in Greece, perhaps not without the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries, the cult acquires its definitive forms: its ritual language remains, from then on, Greek, as appears from the initiatory formulas handed down to us by Firmicus Maternus and by Clement of Alexandria.
According to Roman tradition, in 204 B.C., on the suggestion of the Sibylline books, Rome would have introduced - obtaining it from Attalus, king of Pergamum - into its territory the black stone of Pessinus, the aniconic image of the goddess, and would have placed it, provisionally, in the temple of Victory on the Palatine. The fact is that already in 191 B.C. a temple is dedicated to the goddess, and precisely on the Palatine, that is, contrary to what happened for the other divinities of foreign origin, within the pomerium. The goddess was, in fact, considered as a divinity of the Trojans, ancestors of the Romans, therefore not foreign: even in her official name, Magna Mater Deum Idaea, this conviction is expressed. The first Roman worshippers of the goddess are the aristocrats who form cult sodalities. But the original cult, in its forms foreign to the Roman republican mentality, was entrusted to Phrygian priests, and no Roman citizen could be initiated into the mysteries. Even of the spring festivals only the lavatio of the sacred image in the river Almo takes place in public: other celebrations, such as the Ludi Megalenses, have the typical character of the Roman cult. Only under the emperor Claudius did the festivals become public also in their original form. In the calendar of Philocalus there is found the whole ordering of the spring celebrations (from March 15 to 28). In these festivals, with their significant names (Conna intrat, Arbor intrat, Sanguem, Hilaria, Requietio, Lavatio, Initium Caiani) the death and resurrection of Attis was represented symbolically: during it took place the self-emasculation of the "galli." To this religion belonged originally the rite of the taurobolium: the "rebirth" of the initiate was promoted by means of his sprinkling with the blood of the bull killed above a perforated platform beneath which was the taurobolium.
From Rome, its new center, the cult spread into the provinces. Even in the last period of paganism it had great importance. The Roman aristocrats in the struggle against victorious Christianity had themselves initiated into these and other mysteries. Julian the Apostate is one of the most fervent supporters of the cult of the Great Mother.
Some heretical sects of early Christianity, especially in the eastern sphere, show a clear influence of the cult of C.: thus that of the Ophites and that, more important, of the Montanists.
Bibliography6 works
Angelo Brelich