The Geography of Strabo, Volume 2 (of 3)

21. But Acusilaus, the Argive, mentions a Camillus, the [CAS. 473] son of Cabeira and Vulcan; who had three sons, Cabeiri, (and three daughters,) the Nymphs Cabeirides.[741]

According to Pherecydes, there sprung from Apollo and Rhetia nine Corybantes, who lived in Samothrace; that from Cabeira, the daughter of Proteus and Vulcan, there were three Cabeiri, and three Nymphs, Cabeirides, and that each had their own sacred rites. But it was at Lemnos and Imbros that the Cabeiri were more especially the objects of divine worship, and in some of the cities of the Troad; their names are mystical.

Herodotus[742] mentions, that there were at Memphis temples of the Cabeiri as well as of Vulcan, which were destroyed by Cambyses. The places where these dæmons received divine honours are uninhabited, as Corybantium in the territory Hamaxitia belonging to the country of the Alexandrians, near Sminthium;[743] and Corybissa in the Scepsian territory about the river Eureïs, and a village of the same name, and the winter torrent Æthaloeïs.[744]

The Scepsian says, that it is probable that the Curetes and Corybantes are the same persons, who as youths and boys were employed to perform the armed dance in the worship of the mother of the gods. They were called Corybantes[745] from their dancing gait, and butting with their head (κορύπτοντας); by the poet they were called βητάρμονες,

“Come hither, you who are the best skilled Betarmones among the Phæacians.”[746]

Because the Corybantes are dancers, and are frantic, we call those persons by this name whose movements are furious.

22. Some writers say that the first inhabitants of the country at the foot of Mount Ida were called Idæan Dactyli, for the country below mountains is called the foot, and the summits of mountains their heads; so the separate extremities of Ida (and all are sacred to the mother of the gods) are called Idæan Dactyli.[747]

But Sophocles[748] supposes, that the first five were males, who discovered and forged iron,[749] and many other things which were useful for the purposes of life; that these persons had five sisters, and from their number had the name of Dactyli.[750] Different persons however relate these fables differently, connecting one uncertainty with another. They differ both with respect to the numbers and the names of these persons; some of whom they call Celmis, and Damnameneus, and Hercules, and Acmon, who, according to some writers, were natives of Ida, according to others, were settlers, but all agree that they were the first workers in iron, and upon Mount Ida. All writers suppose them to have been magicians, attendants upon the mother of the gods, and to have lived in Phrygia about Mount Ida. They call the Troad Phrygia, because, after the devastation of Troy, the neighbouring Phrygians became masters of the country. It is also supposed that the Curetes and the Corybantes were descendants of the Idæan Dactyli, and that they gave the name of Idæan Dactyli to the first hundred persons who were born in Crete; that from these descended nine Curetes, each of whom had ten children, who were called Idæan Dactyli.[751]

23. Although we are not fond of fabulous stories, yet we have expatiated upon these, because they belong to subjects of a theological nature.