LP0074 - Cybele & Atlantis - Origin of the Gods, from Diodorus Siculus' Library of History

Legendary Passages #0074 - Cybele & Atlantis - Origin of the Gods, from Diodorus Siculus' Library of History. Last time we discussed the god Uranus and his children. This time we cover his sons Atlas and Cronus, and their various descendants. But first long aside on the goddess Cybele, born a princess but abandoned in the countryside. She fell in love with Attis, but after her father found out, he had him killed. She wandered the countryside with her friend Marsyas, who competed with Apollo in music and lost badly. Anyway, Atlas, son of Uranus, ruled Mount Atlas and the coastlines, and made many discoveries in astrology. That is why he holds aloft the sphere of the earth and the sphere of heaven. He is most well known for his seven daughters, the mothers of many gods and heroes, who became the constellation Pleiades. Now Cronus was a mean and unjust man who married his sister Rhea, and had a son named Zeus who was kind and just. Zeus overthrew his father and the Titans, and became master of the world, and ruled with virtue and goodness. Here ends our section on Atlantis, for now. The next episode begins a new phase.... http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3D*.html Cybele & Atlantis, a Legendary Passage, from Diodorus Siculus' Library of History, translated by C. H. Oldfather. However, an account is handed down also that this goddess was born in Phrygia. For the natives of that country have the following myth: In ancient times Meïon became king of Phrygia and Lydia; and marrying Dindymê he begat an infant daughter, but being unwilling to rear her he exposed her on the mountain which was called Cybelus. There, in accordance with some divine providence, both the leopards and some of the other especially ferocious wild beasts offered their nipples to the child and so gave it nourishment, and some women who were tending the flocks in that place witnessed the happening, and being astonished at the strange event took up the babe and called her Cybelê after the name of the place. The child, as she grew up, excelled in both beauty and virtue and also came to be admired for her intelligence; for she was the first to devise the pipe of many reeds and to invent cymbals and kettledrums with which to accompany the games and the dance, and in addition she taught how to heal the sicknesses of both flocks and little children by means of rites of purification; in consequence, since the babes were saved from death by her spells and were generally taken up in her arms, her devotion to them and affection for them led all the people to speak of her as the "mother of the mountain." The man who associated with her and loved her more than anyone else, they say, was Marsyas the physician, who was admired for his intelligence and chastity; and a proof of his intelligence they find in the fact that he imitated the sounds made by the pipe of many reeds and carried all its notes over into the flute, and as an indication of his chastity they cite his abstinence from sexual pleasures until the day of his death. Now Cybelê, the myth records, having arrived at full womanhood, came to love a certain native youth who was known as Attis, but at a later time received the appellation Papas; with him she consorted secretly and became with child, and at about the same time her parents recognized her as their child. Consequently she was brought up into the palace, and her father welcomed her at the outset under the impression that she was a virgin, but later, when he learned of her seduction, he put to death her nurses and Attis as well and cast their bodies forth to lie unburied; whereupon Cybelê, they say, because of her love for the youth and grief over the nurses, became frenzied and rushed out of the palace into the countryside. And crying aloud and beating upon a kettledrum she visited every country alone, with hair hanging free, and Marsyas, out of pity for her plight, voluntarily followed her and accompanied her in her wan