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Kybele in Athens of the 5Th Century Bc. the Political Background of the Introduction of a Foreign Deity

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Kybele in Athens of the 5Th Century Bc. the Political Background of the Introduction of a Foreign Deity KYBELE IN ATHENS OF THE 5TH CENTURY BC. THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF THE INTRODUCTION OF A FOREIGN DEITY Sylvana Katsaounou The Great Mother or Mother of the Gods is Mne other than the Phrygian goddess Kybele whose cult spread from the region of Phrygia through the Greek cities of Asia Minor to mainland Greece during the 6th century BC.1 The name Kybele is the Greek rendering of the adjective Kubileya which is a toponymic epithet derived from the name of a Phrygian mountain2 and cited for the first time in Pindar.3 By the 4th century BC the process of her dissemination in Greece had been com­ pleted and a great number of Metroa were dedicated to her. The Phrygian Mother achieved an important position in ancient Greek religion during the 5th century BC in the region of Attika and particularly in Athens, the main center of her worship. Count­ less votive offerings and a plethora of inscribed and literary testimonies certify that this was a goddess, whose foreign origin and distinctive Anatolian features did not keep her on the sidelines of Greek worship for long. On the contrary, the goddess’ distinct character with its varied properties, her correlation to deities of Greek religion, such as Demeter, Artemis, Aphrodite, Rhea and Gaia, and the fact that she gradually assumed Greek elements rendered Great Mother prominent in the Greek pantheon and the im­ pact of her cult on the social and political life of the ancient Greeks unchallenged. The reception of the Anatolian Mother of the gods by the Greeks and the intro­ duction of her image that comprises Greek and Eastern elements was imposed on the pious Athenian society forming an integral part of public and private worship.4 1. Roller 1999b, 119. 2. Guittard 2012, 213-6. We prefer using the ancient Greek form Kybele to Cybele, which is the Latin form of the name. Kybele, which is cited in ancient Greek literature (see, below n. 3), is also used by modern scholars, such as Lynn Roller 1999b. 3. Pindar, Fr. 80. 4. According to some scholars the sanctuary of the goddess was associated with the Bouleuteri- on and the archives in early times, while from the beginning of her cult the Mother of the Gods was considered identical with Demeter. See, Thompson 1937, 205. Boegegold 1972, 23. Boersma 1970, 28-31. Gerard 1980, 155. Regarding the archaic structure, which lies on the North of the old Bouleuterion in the Ancient Agora of Athens and is believed to be a temple, there is no indication that it housed Mother’s cult. On the archaic temple, see Thompson 1937, 134-5 and 140, who sug­ gests that the archaic phase of the Old Bouleuterion is dated in the end of the 6th c. BC based on the fill of the Grain Drain which runs along the east side of the buildings on the West side of the Agora. See, also Thompson and Whycherley 1972, 29, 158-61, who consider this building and its neighbouring archaic Bouleuterion contemporary based on their structural similarity. St. Miller proposes a theory, which contradicts the generally accepted views of the excavators of the Athenian 106 SYLVANA KATSAOUNOU From the combination of different versions presented by literary sources regard­ ing the establishment of the Great Mother’s worship in Athens, it is revealed that her shrine was closely connected to the Council House and the city’s archives.5 From a scholiast on Aeschines’ oration against Ktesiphon (187), we hear that the Athenians dedicated a part of the Bouleuterion to the Meter’s cult.6 From Lycurgus7 and Deinarchus8 we are also informed that the old council House was reserved for the goddess’ cult and also for housing the public archives. A characteristic reference, however, to the Metroon both as a repository of records and as a cult place is that of the Hellenistic author Chamaileon from Herakleia Pontica,9 in which it is mentioned that Alcibiades have entered the Bouleuterion in order to erase a pending lawsuit during the period between 408 and 405 BC.10 The earliest evidence of the function of the building named Metroon as storage for public archives though is yielded by an inscription from the Athenian Agora dated in 375/4 BC.11 Later writers historically record the causes of the advent of the Phrygian goddess and her worship with variations in their narratives, which are partly based on leg­ end. The most important of these records belong to the emperor Julian, the Lexicon Suda, the Lexicographer Photius and the Byzantine Apostolius, which explain that the erection of the Metroon in Athens was due to the execution of one of the Moth­ er’s priests, the so-called metragyrtes, who wanted to initiate women into her cult. A consequence of that murder was the outbreak of a plague. In order to propitiate agora related to the identification of the buildings on the west side under the hill of Agoraios Kolo- nos. He believes that this archaic temple is nothing more than a product of imaginary hypothesis, while he makes a theoretical reconstruction of the area in 420 BC, in which the buildings of the Old Bouleuterion and its neighboring open-air older Bouleuterion dominate. His aspect, which is not based on archaeological evidence, is rejected by Leslie Shear Jr. (1995, 157-90) whose arguments are based on the results of the excavations conducted in the area. From the scholiast on Aischines’ speech against Ktesiphon (Schol.Aisch.187) we are informed that the Athenians had converted a part of the Bouleuterion into a Metroon. See Thompson 1937, 208 and 1951, 50-5. See, also Francis 1990, 112. Francis-Vickers 1988, 160. Shear (1993, 424-27), who reconsiders the chronology of the Old Bouleuterion based on the re-examination of the archaeological context in the layers of the building’s foundations, according to which the building was erected in 500 BC and was destroyed in 479 BC while it was reconstructed almost immediately, in order to fulfill its function. 5. Thompson 1937, 205. 6. See, Thompson 1937, 208. However, Aischines in the same part of the speech places the metroon near to the Bouleuterion: ’Εν τοίνυν τ& μητρώω παρά το βουλευτήριον.... 7. Plutarch, Vitae decem Oratorum 842 E. 8. Deinarchus against Demosthenes Ι, 86. 9. Chameleon Ponticus, in Athenaeus, ΙΧ 407Β-0 10. Xagorari 2008, 106. 11. IG II2 1445, l. 24-26. KYBELE IN ATHENS OF THE 5TH CENTURY BC 107 the goddess, the Athenians constructed the Bouleuterion in the very place where the metragyrtes was put to death and afterwards they erected a statue in his honor.12 It is possible that the official establishment of Kybele’s cult was realized in the last quarter of the 5th c. BC after the foundation of a new council House next to the old one,13 which housed the city’s archives and the cult statue of the Mother goddess. How­ ever, according to Georgios Despines,14 not long before the 3rd quarter of the 5th c. BC (450-440 BC), a statuary type was created by Agorakritus, which is reproduced in the naiskoi, the statuettes and the votive reliefs representing the Mother of the Gods.15 The mention of the word plague is perhaps a chronological indication of the in­ troduction of Great Mother’s worship as other elements of narratives do not indicate the exact period of her advent. And it is probably associated with the plague of 430 BC during which Pericles perished. It remains, however, a hypothesis since no spe­ cific reference is made to the context of the metragyrtes’ death and its aftermath. 16 M. Munn connects the murder of the metragyrtes and the foundation of the Metroon to the end of the 5th c. BC with the story of Darius’ emissaries and the appeasing of the goddess for their murder based on the information furnished by Theopompus or Anaximenes, both historians of the 4th c. BC. 17 12. Julian V 159 a-b; Suda (v. Μητραγύρτης); Photius s.v. Μητραγύρτης; Suda s.v. Μητραγύρτης; Apostolius ΙΙ, 34. 13. For the chronology of the Old Bouleuterion, see Thompson 1988, 199 and above n.4. 14. Despines 1971, 122. 15. The agorakritan type of the statue of the goddess is repeated on the statue of the Mother of the Gods from Moschato which is dated to the beginning of the 4th c. BC. This work presents some sim­ ilarities with that of Agorakritus which are related to the rendering of the garment and the placement of the left hand on the tympanum. See, Papachristodoulou 1973, 191-92. Palagia 2005, 124-25. 16. Possibly it is about a famine and not a plague which dates the introduction of the cult at the be­ ginning of the 5th c. BC according to Martin Nilsson (1955, 727). In spite of the fact that according to Giovanni Cerri (1983, 168) the goddess’s cult was introduced in the last quarter of the 5th c BC, Nicoletta Frapiccini (1987, 14) believes that it is correct to talk about a famine since in Suda at the lemma βάραβρον (chasm) and more specifically in the narrative of the same circumstance the word sterility is used for the definition of the term. The earlier literary evidence on the introduction of her worship in Athens is Euripides’ Hippolytus (ls.141-144) in 428 BC. On the introduction of Ky­ bele’s cult in Athens see, Frapiccini 1987, 15-21. Thompson 1937, 115-17. Winter 1903, 43, 4, 50, 2 a, b, c and 3. Cerri 1983, 168.
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