Agdistis

Adv. Nat.

p. 227 5.5

pp. 233ff. 5.12 ff.

See also: [1]

s.v. Ἄγδιστις

ᾑ αὐτὴ τῇ τῶν θεῶν

1.4.5

Well then, the Pergameni took Ancyra and Pessinus which lies under Mount Agdistis, where they say that Attis lies buried.

7.17.10

... But the current view about Attis is different, the local legend about him being this. Zeus, it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground, which in course of time sent up a demon, with two sexual organs, male and female. They call the demon Agdistis. But the gods, fearing¹ Agdistis, cut off the male organ.

¹ With δήσαντες the meaning is: “bound Agdistis and cut off.”

7.17.11

There grew up from it an almond-tree with its fruit ripe, and a daughter of the river Sangarius, they say, took of the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child. A boy was born, and exposed, but was tended by a he-goat. As he grew up his beauty was more than human, and Agdistis fell in love with him. When he had grown up, Attis was sent by his relatives to Pessinus, that he might wed the king's daughter.

7.17.12

The marriage-song was being sung, when Agdistis appeared, and Attis went mad and cut off his genitals, as also did he who was giving him his daughter in marriage. But Agdistis repented of what he had done to Attis, and persuaded Zeus to grant that the body of Attis should neither rot at all nor decay.

10.3.12

But as for the Berecyntes,36 a tribe of Phrygians, and the Phrygians in general, and those of the Trojans who live round Ida, they too hold Rhea in honor and worship her with orgies, calling her Mother of the gods and Agdistis and Phrygia the Great Goddess, and also, from the places where she is worshipped, Idaea and Dindymene and Sipylene and Pessinuntis and Cybele and Cybebe.

12.5.3

Pessinus is the greatest of the emporiums in that part of the world, containing a temple of the Mother of the gods, which is an object of great veneration. They call her Agdistis.

s.v. Agdistis

(Ἄγδιστις; Ágdistis). Mythical hermaphrodite from the Phrygian Attis myth, named after the mountain rock Agdus at Pessinus (Timotheus at Arnob. 5,5-7; cf. Paus. 7,17,9-12). According to Paus. 1,4,5 the mountain itself was called A. and was the grave site of Attis. According to the myth handed down from Timotheus (see above), the rock Agdus, fertilized by Zeus' seed, once gave birth to a being with male as well as female reproductive organs, a being so strong and fierce, that it regarded itself as mightier than the gods. Dionysus cunningly made the hermaphrodite drunk and bound it in such a way that upon awakening it castrated itself. The pomegranate tree arose from the torn-off male genitals. The king's daughter, Nana, made pregnant by its fruit, gave birth to Attis. When he was a youth, A. fell in love with him, took him on a hunt, and gave him the booty as a present. Out of jealousy A. appeared together with Cybele at Attis' wedding and caused his death by self-castration. Although in Arnobius (5,5,7) Agdus and the mother of the gods are two separate figures; A. was an epithet of Cybele (Str. 10,3,12 [1. 767 f.]) and is identified with her [2. 773]. Yet paradoxically, as the hunting companion of Attis A. has the features of a paederast, despite his castration [3. 61]. He is in the end a mythical prefiguration of the emasculated Attis himself and represents, like Attis, a state of sexual indifference that is typical in initiation rites. The power of the primeval hermaphrodite, presented by the myth as hubris and experienced by the gods as a challenge, connects the stone-born A. with the figure of the Hittite Ullikummi [4].

• Bremmer, Jan, "Attis: A Greek God in Anatolian Pessinous and Catullan Rome", Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 57, Fasc. 5, Catullus 63 (2004), pp. 534-573. JSTOR 4433594. PDF

p. 540

The earliest securely identified image of Attis is a votive stele of the Piraeus from the middle middle to the third quarter of the fourth century BC. The identification is secured by the inscription 'Timothea to Angdistis and Attis on behalf of her children according to command' (IG II² 4671),

p. 542

Around 300 BC, under the rule of Ptolemy I, the Athenian Eumolpid Timotheus published an account of Kybele and her rites, which Burkert calls the hieros logos of Pessinous.³⁷) However, ...

p. 543

the entering by the Mother of the city 'having raised the wall with her head, ...

p. 545

In the final part of the story the king intended to give his daughter in marriage to Attis, but the Mother of the Gods wanted to prevent the marriage and entered the city.

p. 552

Lous Robert has published several coins that carry the name Agdistis and show a mountain;⁷⁷)

⁷⁷) Robert 1980, 236, who on p. 238 note 69 refers to the epigraphical bibliography with the varying forms of the name, such as Agdissis, Aggistis, Angdisis, Angistis or Anggdistis.

p. 25 n. 24

It is at the end of the 4th century or at the beginning of the 3rd that we can date a marble stele found at the Piraeus with a figurative representation accompanied by an inscription. There appears two figures, a youth on Oriental dress seated on a rock and in front of him a female figure standing, with a tympanum in her left hand and a flower (?) in her right, turned towards the youth who makes a gesture receiving it. The inscription identifies the figures in question as Attis and Agdistis. IG II², 4671: ... Cf. ... M. J. Vermaseren. The Legend of Attis in Greek and Roman Art ... ²⁴

p. 26

...Attis appeared in a vast documentary tradition as the prototype of the Gallus, or rather as the worshipper who celebrates the mythic-orgiastic cult of Cybele and, in a fit of total devotion to the goddess, under the influence of the mania, dedicates his own virility to her.

p. 34

It is not easy to appreciate the religious historical significance of the double divine "presence" in the religious complex in question unless we interpret it as a straightforward "doubling" of the character of the Great Mother, possibly due to the "Hellenizing" mythographer's intention to safeguard, in the crudity of the episode narrated, the dignity of the "Mother of the Gods" from the "barbarous" and coarse aspects of the hermaphrodite Agdistis.

Indeed the figure of Agdistis occupied a special position in the traditions connected with the Cybele's religion. If, as we know, some literary and epigraphic sources identify the Meter theon with Agdistis, presenting the latter name as an epithet,³¹ others prefer to distinguish between the two characters, mentioning the one next to the other in the same context.

Thus an inscription rom Iconium invokes ... [Agdistis] among the gods regarded as ... [saviours] besides [cont.]

p. 35

Apollo and Artemis.³² Of particular interest is an altar from Sizma, a village of Lycaconia, whose four faces bear reliefs representing deities and inscriptions. While sides A and C have dedications to Apollo Sozon and to Helios,side B has the inscription ... On side D, near the front view of a figure on a throne we read the dedication ... [to Zizimene an epithet of the Great Mother].

The epithet Zizimene is frequently used to designate the Great Mother in various centers of Asia Minor ... Consequently the altar of Sizma represents the Great Mother and Agdistis as separate characters.

In Many more cases Agdistis appears alone. In addition to a figurative stele with an inscription from the Piraeus,³⁷ she is mentioned in Greece at Rhamnus where she had a sanctuary of her own.³⁸

s.v. Agdistis

(Ἄγδιστις) The legend of Agdistis is an eastern tale, coming originally from Pessinus, the country of Cybele the Great Mother of the Gods, and recorded for us by Pausanias. It begins by Zeus having a dream ...

p. 218

p. 9

In the "Phrygian" version of the myth there re almost continual references to Phrygia and in particular to the sacred city of Pessinous where, at least from Hellenistic times, but probably earlier, there was a cult of a "Great Mother" goddess, whom Strabo explicitly called Agdistist.

p. 63

However, a different situation emerges from the epigraphic evidence from Piraeius¹⁵, the seat of a mētrōon and of a private association connected with the cult of the Great Mother as early as the 4th century BCE¹⁶ ... This relief¹⁷, dated between the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 3rd¹⁸, shows a seated male to whom a female — easily identified as the Great Mother — is offering a cup. Both characters seem to be the same size, which is evidence that they are equal in rank, as the inscription confirms. In this votive inscription the dedicator addresses "Agdistis and Attis". Although the mention of Agdistis clearly refers to a "foreign" dimension of the cult, the context in which it occurred, however, is still rather obscure¹⁹.

¹⁹ The cult of Agdistis at Rhamnous in he 1st century BCE may also have been imported by foreigners, possibly mercenaries, cf. Borgeaud 1996, pp. 49–50.

s.v. Agdistis

a mythical being connected with the Phrygian. worship of Attes or Atys. Pausanias (7.17.5) relates the following story about Agdistis. On one occasion Zeus unwittingly begot by the Earth a superhuman being which was at once man and woman, and was called Agdistis. The gods dreaded it and unmanned it, and from its severed αὶδοῖα there grew up an almond-tree. Once when the daughter of the river-god Sangarius was gathering the fruit of this tree, she put some almonds into her bosom ; but here the almonds disappeared, and she became the mother of Attes, who was of such extraordinary beauty, that when he had grown up Agdistis fell in love with him. His relatives, however, destined him to become the husband of the daughter of the king of Pessinus, whither he went accordingly. But at the moment when the hymeneal song had commenced, Agdistis appeared, and Attes was seized by a fit of madness, in which he unmanned himself; the king who had given him his daughter did the same. Agdistis now repented her deed, and obtained from Zeus the promise that the body of Attes should not become decomposed or disappear. This is, says Pausanias, the most popular account of an otherwise mysterious affair, which is probably part of a symbolical worship of the creative powers of nature. A hill of the name of Agdistis in Phrygia, at the foot of which Attes was believed to be buried, is mentioned by Pausanias. (1.4.5.) According to Hesychius (s. v.) and Strabo (xii. p.567; comp. x. p. 469), Agdistis is the same as Cybele, who was worshipped at Pessinus under that name. A story somewhat different is given by Arnobius. (Adv. Gent. 9.5.4 ; comp. Minuc. Felix, 21.)

s.v. Agdistis

Also known as:Cybele

Deified object. In some renditions, Agdo was a natural rock ...

• Vermaseren, M. J. (Maarten Jozef), The legend of Attis in Greek and Roman art, Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1966. Internet Archive.

p. 22

A relief from the Metroon in the Piraeus (PL XI) near Athens, ⁴) dedicated to Agdistis and Attis at the beginning of the third of the end of the fourth century B.C. shows this in oriental dress sitting on a rock with his pedum leaning against it. In his left hand he holds the syrinx and his right hand is upraised to receive a small jug ⁵) from Agdistis = Cybele. The Goddess is approaching him and is dressed in a low polos, a [cont.]

⁵) And not a flower, as is generally believed.

p. 23

girded iconic chiton with peplos, and holds a tympanum in her left hand.

Plate XI

s.v. Agdistis

Agdistis, a form of the Phrygian mother-goddess; at Pessinus Cybele was called Agdistis (Strabo 469, 567). According to the myth (see attis), she was originally androgynous. Her cult spread to various parts of Anatolia, to Egypt (by 250BCE), to Attica (with that of Attis in Piraeus 4th–3rd, cents., IG 22. 4671; at Rhamnus, 83/2 BCE), Lesbos, and Panticapeum. At Lydian Philadelphia (2) her private shrine (1st cent. BCE) enforced a strict moral code (Syll.3 985; O. Weinreich, Sitz. Heidelberg1919). There and elsewhere Agdistis appears with theoi sōtēres. See anatolian deities.

s.v. Attis

Attis, in mythology, the youthful consort of Cybele and prototype of her eunuch devotees. The myth exists in two main forms, with many variants. According to the Phrygian tale (Paus. 7. 17. 10–12; cf. Arn. Adv. nat. 5. 5–7), the gods castrated the androgynous Agdistis; from the severed male parts an almond tree sprang and by its fruit Nana conceived Attis. Later Agdistis fell in love with him, and to prevent his marriage to another caused him to castrate himself. Agdistis is clearly a doublet of Cybele, though Arnobius brings them both into his account. Ovid (Fast. 4. 221–44) and others change many details, but keep the essential aetiological feature, the self-castration. In a probably Lydian version Attis, like Adonis, is killed by a boar. The story of Atys, son of Croesus, who was killed by the Phrygian Adrastus in a boar-hunt (Hdt. 1. 34–35) is an adaptation of this, and attests its antiquity, though the Phrygian is probably the older version.