Catullus spent a year in Bythynia (Modern Turkey), the center of Cybele’s worship. The details he gives of her cult, particularly the description of its music, are vividly authentic.
A fast-moving cruiser shot over deep seas
carrying Attis from Greece to Asia Minor.
He landed, ran through the Trojan groves
into the forest-shadow-world of the goddess.
Angry madness revved his head like an engine —
it didn’t seem real when he struck down with sharp flint
and lopped what hung between his legs.
His whole body weakened, feeling
the last of his manhood drain hot down his legs,
blood-spattering the ground.
Then he-she grabbed the light tambourine that thumps out a summons
to your sacred rites, Cybele, Great Mother!
Battering the tight bull-hide with soft fingertips,
it, Attis, shivered, started singing to the others:
“You eunuchs, you priestesses of Cybele,
to the high groves — go! you straying cattle,
Cybele’s, the Lady of Mount Dyndymus’ herd.
In your hearts already exiled, you couldn’t wait to leave,
you followed my lead over violent sea,
you unsexed yourselves,
like me, you made yourselves women
and showed your hatred of women’s love.
Dance! Our mistress laughs to see us crazed!
To Cybele, run, run, to the groves of the goddess,
where cymbal screams in a metal voice, drum bellows back, where heavy Phrygian flute buzzes through its curving pipes,
where ivy-crowned Maenads dance,
slavering, snapping in convulsions,
electrifying the holy mysteries with loud shrill howls.
Go mad!” sang Attis, the un-woman.
Their tongues flickered out as they yowled the cry of Bacchus,
the smooth drum, hollow, thudding, replied,
rattling cymbals clattered shrill,
the whole chorus ran up Mount Ida, gasping,
chaos on a hundred feet.,Attis with his drum in the lead,
like an untamed bullock running from the yoke,
and the Gallae, the sacred eunuchs, ran after.
When they reached the home of Cybele, exhausted,
they fell asleep, nor even thought of food.
Stupor shut their eyes in sinking weakness,
their madness gentled into peace.
When gold-faced sun turned on its beaming eye,
scanning bright white sky, hard ground, rough sea, scattering night, sleep ran away
from waking Attis. (The Grace Pasithea,
bride of Sleep, eagerly lifted the drowse-god
into her trembling lap.)
Calm and sensitive, without the speeding
madness now, Attis begins to consider what she’s done.
Her clear mind sees where she is, without what,
she runs hysterical back to the shore,
eyes dropping tears into sea.
“My country, where I was born, country that gave me life,
I left you like a runaway slave — to come to Ida’s
snowy forests of wild animals. I wander among their lairs.
Where’s home, where can I look for it?
The moment my madness goes
I find only forest. I lost my country,
possessions, friends, family. I lost the forum,
the wrestling matches, the racetrack, the gym.
My soul keeps asking for all I lost, looking for all that’s gone.
I had that noblest beauty — which is male.
As man, as adolescent and as boy
I was the star of the gymnasium,
muscles gleaming with oil, glorious, stared at,
garlands were hung on my house, would-be male lovers spent their nights in my doorway
— in the morning I had to step over their sleeping bodies.
Am I now the serving girl of the goddess, one of Cybele’s slaves?
A maenad, a neuter, a piece of what I was?
Will I have to live on cold snowy Ida,
pass my life under Phrygia’s tall pillars,
living with deer and wild boar?
Now I regret, now I feel my wound.”
As these words passed Attis’ red lips, the goddess heard —
Cybele unyoked her chariot’s lions, flickered her whip along the sides of the left cow-killing beast,
“Go after him, teach him the madness, make him rave again — with fear!
Hunt him back to my grove — he thinks he can leave!
Roar, make the whole place tremble resonant,
go, heavy tail slamming against your own flanks,
red mane slapping thick-muscled neck!”
Menacing Cybele spoke and loosed it,
the eager beast ran roaring off, crushing underbrush,
came to the wet white-foaming shore, saw feeble Attis by the ocean-plain
and charged. She ran crazily back into the woods, a serving girl
for the rest of her life.
Goddess, great goddess Cybele, Lady of Mount Dyndymus,
may all your madness remain far from me —
inspire others, drive others mad.
This excerpt is from Brumby’s book Devil Girls of Ancient Rome, available from our bookstore here.