Cybele

Cybele, the Great Mother of the Gods, is the mighty Anatolian mother-goddess whom the Greeks identified with Rhea and the Romans welcomed to Rome as the Magna Mater. Enthroned and crowned with towers, drawn by lions, she is the source of all life and fertility, served by ecstatic rites and the clashing music of her attendant Corybantes.

Her worship, wild and orgiastic, spread across the ancient world. The emperor Julian devoted one of his hymns to her, reading the Mother of the Gods philosophically as the great life-giving principle that proceeds from the intelligible realm and pours generative power into the cosmos — the divine motherhood that mediates between the eternal and the world of becoming.

Epithets

• Magna Mater Lat. — the Great Mother
• Meter Oreia Μήτηρ Ὀρεία — Mother of the Mountains
• Idaea Ἰδαία — of Mount Ida
• Dindymene Δινδυμήνη — of Mount Dindymon