HKB
“striking forcibly the Asiatic cithara:” another calls the pipes Berecynthian and Phrygian. [CAS. 471] Some of the instruments also have barbarous names, as Nablas, Sambyce,[728] Barbitus,[729] Magadis,[730] and many others.
As in other things the Athenians always showed their admiration of foreign customs, so they displayed it in what respected the gods. They adopted many foreign sacred ceremonies, particularly those of Thrace and Phrygia; for which they were ridiculed in comedies. Plato mentions the Bendidean, and Demosthenes the Phrygian rites, where he is exposing Æschines and his mother to the scorn of the people; the former for having been present when his mother was sacrificing, and for frequently joining the band of Bacchanalians in celebrating their festivals, and shouting, Evoï, Saboï, Hyes Attes, and Attes Hyes, for these cries belong to the rites of Sabazius and the Great Mother.
But there may be discovered respecting these dæmons, and the variety of their names, that they were not called ministers only of the gods, but themselves were called gods. For Hesiod says that Hecaterus and the daughter of Phoroneus had five daughters,
“From whom sprung the goddesses, the mountain nymphs, And the worthless and idle race of satyrs, And the gods Curetes, lovers of sport and dance.”
The author of the Phoronis calls the Curetes, players upon the pipe, and Phrygians; others call them “earth-born, and wearing brazen shields.” Another author terms the Corybantes, and not the Curetes, Phrygians, and the Curetes, Cretans. Brazen shields were first worn in Eubœa, whence the people had the name of Chalcidenses.[731] Others say, that the Corybantes who came from Bactriana, or, according to some writers, from the Colchi, were given to Rhea, as a band of armed ministers, by Titan. But in the Cretan history the Curetes are called nurses and guardians of Jove, and are described as having been sent for from Phrygia to Crete by Rhea. According to other writers, there were nine Telchines in Rhodes, who accompanied Rhea to Crete, and from nursing[732] Jupiter had the name of Curetes;[733] that Corybus, one of their party, was the founder of Hierapytna, and furnished the Prasians[734] in Rhodes with the pretext for saying that Corybantes were certain dæmons, children of Minerva and the sun. By others, the Corybantes are represented to be the children of Saturn; by others, of Jupiter and Calliope, or to be the same persons as the Cabeiri; that they went away[735] to Samothrace,[736] which was formerly called Melite; but their lives and actions are mysterious.
The Scepsian says in another place, in contradiction to Euripides, that it is not the custom in Crete to pay divine honours to Rhea, and that these rites were not established there, but in Phrygia only, and in the Troad, and that they who affirm the contrary are mythologists rather than historians; and were probably misled by an identity of name, for Ida is a mountain both in the Troad and in Crete; and Dicte is a spot in the Scepsian territory, and a mountain in Crete.[738] Pytna is a peak of Ida, (and a mountain in Crete,) whence the city Hierapytna has its name. There is Hippocorona in the territory of Adramyttium, and Hippocoronium[739] in Crete. Samonium also is the eastern promontory of the island, and a plain in the Neandris,[740] and in the territory of the Alexandrians (Alexandria Troas).