Rhea
（
Ῥέα, Ep. and Ion.
Ῥεία,
Ῥείη, Ῥέη). A goddess whom the Greek legends identify as a representation of
the fruitfulness of nature. She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaea, wife of her brother, the
Titan Cronus, by whom she gave birth to the Olympian gods, Zeus, Hades, Poseidon,
Heré, Hestia, Demeter. For this reason she was generally called the
“mother of the gods.” One of her oldest places of worship was Crete, where
in a cave, near the town of Lyctus or else on Mounts Dircé or Ida, she was said to
have given birth to
Zeus (q.v.), and to have hidden him
from the wiles of Cronus. The task of watching and nursing the new-born child she had
intrusted to her devoted servants the Curetes, earth-born demons, armed with weapons of
bronze, who drowned the cry of the child by the noise which they made by beating their spears
against their shields. The name of Curetes was accordingly given to the priests of the Cretan
Rhea and of the Idaean Zeus, who executed noisy war-dances at the festivals of those gods. In
early times the Cretan Rhea was identified with
 |
|
Turreted Head of Cybelé. (Caylus, Recueil d'Antiq v. pl.
3.)
|
the Asiatic
Cybĕlé or
Cybēbé, “the Great
Mother,” a goddess of the powers of nature and the arts of cultivation, who was
worshipped upon mountains in Mysia, Lydia, and Phrygia.
In the former character she was a symbol of the procreative power of nature; in the latter,
she originated the cultivation of the vine and agriculture, together with
all forms of social progress and civilization, which depend upon these. Thus she was regarded
as the founder of towns and cities, and therefore it is that art represents her as crowned
with a diadem of towers.
The true home of this religion was the Phrygian Pessinus, on the river Sangarius, in the
district afterwards known as Galatia, where the goddess was called Agdistis (Strabo, p. 567)
or Angdistis, from a holy rock named Agdus upon Mount Dindymus above the town. Upon this
mountain, after which the goddess derived her name of Dindymené, stood her earliest
sanctuary as well as her oldest effigy (a stone that had fallen from heaven), and the grave of
her beloved
Attis (q.v.). Her priests, the emasculated
Galli, here enjoyed almost royal
 |
|
Rhea, or Cybelé. (From a Roman Lamp.)
|
honour. In Lydia she was worshipped, principally on Mount Tmolus, as the mother of
Zeus and the foster-mother of Dionysus. There was also a temple of Cybelé at
Sardis. Her mythical train was formed by the Corybantes, answering to the Curetes of the
Cretan Rhea; these were said to accompany her over the wooded hills, with lighted torches and
with wild dances, amid the resounding music of flutes and horns and drums and cymbals. After
these the priests of Cybelé were also called Corybantes, and the festivals of the
goddess were celebrated with similar orgies, in the frenzy of which the participators wounded
each other or, like Attis, mutilated themselves. Besides these there were begging priests,
called Metragyrtae and Cybebi, who roamed from place to place as inspired servants and
prophets of the Great Mother. On the Hellespont and on the Propontis, Rhea-Cybelé
was likewise the chief goddess; in particular in the Troad, where she was worshipped upon
Mount Ida as “the Idaean Mother,” and where the Idaean
Dactyli (q.v.) formed her train. From Asia this religion
advanced into Greece. After the Persian Wars it reached Athens, where in the Metroum, the
temple of the Great Mother, which was used as a State record-office, there stood the ideal
image of the goddess fashioned by Phidias (Pausan. i. 3.5). The worship of Cybelé
did not, however, obtain public recognition here, any more than in the rest of Greece, on
account of its orgiastic excesses and the offensive habits of its begging priests. It was
cultivated only by particular associations and by the lower ranks of the people.
In
Rome the worship of the Great Mother (
Magna
Mater) was introduced for political reasons in B.C. 204, at the command of a
Sibylline Oracle, and for the purpose of driving Hannibal out of Italy. An embassy was
sent to bring the holy stone from Pessinus; a festival was founded in honour of the goddess,
to be held on April 2-4 (the Megalesia, from the Greek
Μεγάλη
Μήτηρ=
magna mater); and in 217 a temple on the Palatine was
dedicated to her. The service was performed by a Phrygian priest, a Phrygian priestess, and a
number of Galli (emasculated priests of Cybelé), who were allowed to pass in
procession through the city in accordance with their native rites. Roman citizens were
forbidden to participate in this service, though the praetor on the Palatine and private
persons among the patricians celebrated the feast by entertaining one another, the new cult
being attached to that of Maia or Ops. The worship of Cybelé gained by degrees an
ever-wider extension, so that under the early Empire a fresh festival was instituted, from
March 15-27, with the observance of mourning, followed by the most extravagant joy. In this
festival associations of women and men and the religious board of the
Quindecimviri (q.v.) took part. In the first half
of the second century A.D. the Taurobolia and Criobolia were added. In these ceremonies the
person concerned went through a form of baptism with the blood of bulls and rams killed in
sacrifice, with the object of cleansing him from pollutions and bringing about a new birth.
The oak and pine were sacred to Rhea-Cybelé (see
Attis), as also the lion. She was supposed to traverse the mountains riding on a lion,
or in a chariot drawn by lions. In art she was usually represented enthroned between two
lions, with the mural crown on her head and a small drum in her hand.
