HKB
to him in Olympia, where the games were celebrated, and from the place was called Jupiter Olympius: Olympia was a place upon the confines of Pisa, near the river Alpheus.
In the [182] Island Thasus, where Cadmus left his brother Thasus, the Phoenicians built a Temple to Hercules Olympius, that Hercules, whom Cicero [183] calls ex Idæis Dactylis; cui inferias afferunt. When the mysteries of Ceres were instituted in Eleusis, there were other mysteries instituted to her and her daughter and daughter's husband, in the Island Samothrace, by the Phoenician names of Dii Cabiri Axieros, Axiokersa, and Axiokerses, that is, the great Gods Ceres, Proserpina and Pluto: for [184] Jasius a Samothracian, whose sister married Cadmus, was familiar with Ceres; and Cadmus and Jasius were both of them instituted in these mysteries. Jasius was the brother of Dardanus, and married Cybele the daughter of Meones King of Phrygia, and by her had Corybas; and after his death, Dardanus, Cybele and Corybas went into Phrygia, and carried thither the mysteries of the mother of the Gods, and Cybele called the goddess after her own name, and Corybas called her priests Corybantes: thus Diodorus; but Dionysius saith [185] that Dardanus instituted the Samothracian mysteries, and that his wife Chryses learnt them in Arcadia, and that Idæus the son of Dardanus instituted afterwards the mysteries of the mother of the gods in Phrygia: this Phrygian Goddess was drawn in a chariot by lions, and had a corona turrita on her head, and a drum in her hand, like the Phoenician Goddess Astarte, and the Corybantes danced in armour at her sacrifices in a furious manner, like the Idæi Dactyli; and Lucian [186] tells us that she was the Cretan Rhea*, that is, Europa the mother of Minos: and thus the *Phoenicians introduced the practice of Deifying dead men and women among the Greeks and Phrygians; for I meet with no instance of Deifying dead men and women in Greece, before the coming of Cadmus and Europa from Zidon.