Pr. Non. 4th
‘ Let the sky revolve thrice on its never-resting axis; let Titan thrice yoke and thrice unyoke his steeds, straightway the Berecyntian flute will blow a blast on its bent horn, and the festival of the Idaean Mother will have come. Eunuchs will march and thump their hollow drums, and cymbals clashed on cymbals will give out their tinkling notes: seated on the unmanly necks of her attendants, the goddess herself will be borne with howls through the streets in the city’s midst. The stage is clattering, the games are calling. To your places, Quirites! and in the empty law-courts let the war of suitors cease! I would put many questions, but I am daunted by the shrill cymbal’s clash and the bent flute’s thrilling drone. “Grant me, goddess, someone whom I may question.” The Cybelean goddess spied her learned granddaughters and bade them attend to my inquiry. “Mindful of her command, ye nurslings of Helicon, disclose the reason why the Great Goddess delights in a perpetual din.” So did I speak, and Erato did thus reply (it fell to her to speak of Venus’ month, because her own name is derived from tender love): “Saturn was given this oracle: ‘ Thou best of kings, thou shalt be ousted of thy sceptre by thy son.’
In fear, the god devoured his offspring as fast as they were born, and he kept them sunk in his bowels. Many a time did Rhea grumble, to be so often big with child, yet never be a mother; she repined at her own fruitfulness. Then Jove was born. The testimony of antiquity passes for good; pray do not shake the general faith. A stone concealed in a garment went down the heavenly throat; so had fate decreed that the sire should be beguiled. Now rang steep Ida loud and long with clangorous music, that the boy might pule in safety with his infant mouth. Some beat their shields, others their empty helmets with staves; that was the task of the Curetes and that, too, of the Corybantes. The secret was kept, and the ancient deed is still acted in mimicry; the attendants of the goddess thump the brass and the rumbling leather; cymbals they strike instead of helmets, and drums instead of shields; the flute plays, as of yore, the Phrygian airs.”
The goddess ended. I began: “Why for her sake doth the fierce breed of lions yield their unwonted manes to the curved yoke?” I ended. She began: “’Tis thought, the wildness of the brute was tamed by her: that she testifies by her (lion-drawn) car.” “But why is her head weighted with a turreted crown? Is it because she gave towers to the first cities?” The goddess nodded assent. “Whence came,” said I, “the impulse to cut their members?” When I was silent, the Pierian goddess began to speak: “In the woods a Phrygian boy of handsome face, Attis by name, had attached the tower-bearing goddess to himself by a chaste passion. She wished that he should be kept for herself and should guard her temple, and she said,” Resolve to be a boy for ever.” He promised obedience, and, “If I lie,” quoth he, “may the love for which I break faith be my last love of all.” He broke faith; for, meeting the nymph Sagaritis, he ceased to be what he had been before. For that the angry goddess wreaked vengeance. By wounds inflicted on the tree she cut down the Naiad, who perished thus; for the fate of the Naiad was bound up with the tree.
Attis went mad, and, imagining that the roof of the chamber was falling in, he fled and ran for the top of Mount Dindymus. And he kept crying, at one moment, ‘ Take away the torches! ‘ at another, ‘ Remove the whips! ‘ And oft he swore that the Palaestinian goddesses were on him. He mangled, too, his body with a sharp stone, and trailed his long hair in the filthy dust; and his cry was, ‘ I have deserved it! With my blood I pay the penalty that is my due. Ah, perish the parts that were my ruin! Ah, let them perish,’ still he said. He retrenched the burden of his groin, and of a sudden was bereft of every sign of manhood. His madness set an example, and still his unmanly ministers cut their vile members while they toss their hair.” In such words the Aonian Muse eloquently answered my question as to the cause of the madness of the votaries.
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