Classical Texts and History • Re: The Roman Imperial Cult

Cybele

• Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother";
• Lydian Kuvava;
• Greek: Κυβέλη Kybele, Κυβήβη Kybebe, Κύβελις Kybelis

Cybele was/is an Anatolian mother goddess ... She is Phrygia's only known goddess, and was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception ...

Roman Cybele

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Republican Era
In Rome, Cybele became known as Magna Mater ("Great Mother") or even as Magna Mater deorum Idaea ("great Idaean mother of the gods"), equivalent to the Greek title Meter Theon Idaia ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida"). The Roman state adopted and developed a particular form of her cult after the Roman Senate and its religious advisers consulted the Sibylline oracle and decided that Carthage might be defeated in Rome's second war againstit (aka the Second Punic War; 218 to 201 BCE); and after dire prodigies, including a meteor shower, a failed harvest, and famine, seemed to warn of Rome's imminent defeat. Roman mythographers reinvented her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by way of the Trojan prince Aeneas.

As this cult object belonged to a Roman ally, the Kingdom of Pergamum, the Roman Senate sent ambassadors to seek the king's consent; en route, a consultation with the Greek oracle at Delphi confirmed that the goddess should be brought to Rome ...

As Rome eventually established hegemony over the Mediterranean world, Romanized forms of Cybele's cults spread throughout Rome's empire. Greek and Roman writers debated and disputed the meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods ...

Most modern scholarship agrees that Cybele's consort, Attis, and her [other] eunuch Phrygian priests (Galli) would have arrived with the goddess, along with at least some of the wild, ecstatic features of her Greek and Phrygian cults. The histories of her arrival deal with the piety, purity, and status of the Romans involved, the success of their religious stratagem, and power of the goddess herself; she has no consort or priesthood, and seems fully Romanised from the first ...

Romans came to believe that Cybele, considered a Phrygian outsider even within her Greek cults, was the mother-goddess of ancient Troy (Ilium). Some of Rome's leading patrician families claimed Trojan ancestry; so the "return" of the Mother of all Gods to her once-exiled people would have been particularly welcome, even if her spouse and priesthood were not; its accomplishment would have reflected well on the principals involved and, in turn, on their descendants ...

Imperial era
Augustan ideology identified Magna Mater with Imperial order and Rome's religious authority throughout the empire. Augustus claimed a Trojan ancestry through his adoption by Julius Caesar and the divine favour of Venus; in the iconography of Imperial cult, the empress Livia was Magna Mater's earthly equivalent, Rome's protector and symbolic "Great Mother"; the goddess is portrayed with Livia's face on cameos and statuary. By this time, Rome had absorbed the goddess's Greek and Phrygian homelands, and the Roman version of Cybele as Imperial Rome's protector was introduced there.

Imperial Magna Mater protected the empire's cities and agriculture — Ovid "stresses the barrenness of the earth before the Mother's arrival." Virgil's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE) embellishes her "Trojan" features; she is Berecyntian Cybele, mother of Jupiter himself, and protector of the Trojan prince Aeneas in his flight from the destruction of Troy. She gives the Trojans her sacred tree for shipbuilding, and begs Jupiter to make the ships indestructible. These ships become the means of escape for Aeneas and his men, guided toward Italy and a destiny as ancestors of the Roman people by Venus Genetrix. Once arrived in Italy, these ships, having served their purpose, were transformed into sea nymphs.

... The emperor Claudius claimed her among his ancestors. Claudius promoted Attis to the Roman pantheon and placed his cult under the supervision of the quindecimviri (one of Rome's priestly colleges).

Festivals and cults

'Holy week' in March

The Principate brought the development of an extended festival or "holy week" for Cybele and Attis in March (Latin Martius), from the Ides to nearly the end of the month ...

• March 15 (Ides): Canna intrat ("The Reed enters"), marking the birth of Attis and his exposure in the reeds along the Phrygian river Sangarius, where he was discovered—depending on the version—by either shepherds or Cybele herself ...

• March 22: Arbor intrat ("The Tree enters"), commemorating the death of Attis under a pine tree. The dendrophores ("tree bearers") cut down a tree, suspended from it an image of Attis, and carried it to the temple with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius. A three-day period of mourning followed.

• March 25 (vernal equinox on the Roman calendar): Hilaria ("Rejoicing"), when Attis was reborn.

Scholars are divided as to whether the entire series was more or less put into place under Claudius, or whether the festival grew over time. The Phrygian character of the cult would have appealed to the Julio-Claudians as an expression of their claim to Trojan ancestry. It may be that Claudius established observances mourning the death of Attis, before he had acquired his full significance as a resurrected god of rebirth, expressed by rejoicing at the later Canna intrat and by the Hilaria. The full sequence at any rate is thought to have been official in the time of Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161), but among extant fasti appears only in the Calendar of Philocalus (354 AD).

Priesthood

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In Rome, the Galli and their cult fell under the supreme authority of the pontifices, who were usually drawn from Rome's highest ranking, wealthiest citizens. The Galli themselves, although imported to serve the day-to-day workings of their goddess's cult on Rome's behalf, represented an inversion of Roman priestly traditions in which senior priests were citizens, expected to raise families, and personally responsible for the running costs of their temples, assistants, cults, and festivals. As eunuchs, incapable of reproduction, the Galli were forbidden Roman citizenship and rights of inheritance; like their eastern counterparts, they were technically mendicants whose living depended on the pious generosity of others. For a few days of the year, during the Megalesia, Cybele's laws allowed them to leave their quarters, located within the goddess' temple complex, and roam the streets to beg for money. They were outsiders, marked out as Galli by their regalia, and their notoriously effeminate dress and demeanour, but as priests of a state cult, they were sacred and inviolate. From the start, they were objects of Roman fascination, scorn, and religious awe. No Roman, not even a slave, could castrate himself "in honour of the Goddess" without penalty; in 101 BCE, a slave who had done so was exiled. Augustus selected priests from among his own freedmen to supervise Magna Mater's cult, and brought it under Imperial control. Claudius introduced the senior priestly office of Archigallus, who was not a eunuch and held full Roman citizenship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele#Roman_Cybele