Attis (Greek)

In the late 4th century BC, a cult of Attis became a feature of the Greek world. The story of his origins at Agdistis, recorded by the traveler Pausanias, have some distinctly non-Greek elements: Pausanias was told that the daemon Agdistis initially bore both male and female attributes. But the Olympian gods, fearing Agdistis, cut off the male organ and cast it away. There grew up from it an almond-tree, and when its fruit was ripe, Nana, who was a daughter of the river-god Sangarius, picked an almond and laid it in her bosom. The almond disappeared, and she became pregnant. Nana abandoned the baby (Attis). The infant was tended by a he-goat. As Attis grew, his long-haired beauty was godlike, and Agdistis as Cybele then fell in love with him. But the foster parents of Attis sent him to Pessinos, where he was to wed the king's daughter. According to some versions the King of Pessinos was Midas. Just as the marriage-song was being sung, Agdistis/Cybele appeared in her transcendent power, and Attis went mad and cut off his genitals. Attis' father-in-law-to-be, the king who was giving his daughter in marriage, followed suit, prefiguring the self-castrating corybantes who devoted themselves to Cybele. But Agdistis repented and saw to it that the body of Attis should neither rot at all nor decay.[5]

At the temple of Cybele in Pessinus, the mother of the gods was still called Agdistis, the geographer Strabo recounted.

As neighboring Lydia came to control Phrygia, the cult of Attis was given a Lydian context too. Attis is said to have introduced to Lydia the cult of the Mother Goddess Cybele, incurring the jealousy of Zeus, who sent a boar to destroy the Lydian crops. Then certain Lydians, with Attis himself, were killed by the boar. Pausanias adds, to corroborate this story, that the Gauls who inhabited Pessinos abstained from pork. This myth element may have been invented solely to explain the unusual dietary laws of the Lydian Gauls. In Rome, the eunuch followers of Cybele were known as Galli.

Julian the Apostate gives an account of the spread of the orgiastic cult of Cybele in his Oratio 5. It spread from Anatolia to Greece and eventually to Rome in Republican times, and the cult of Attis, her reborn eunuch consort, accompanied her.

The first literary reference to Attis is the subject of one of the most famous poems by Catullus[7] but it appears that Attis was not worshipped at Rome until the early Empire.[8] Oscar Wilde mentions Attis' self-mutilation in his poem "The Sphinx": "And Atys with his blood-stained knife were better than the thing I am."

Not few believe that people of ancient times were like children, and not at all so clever as modern man. And since technological advance is their clue and indicator, they are persuaded that humanity easily discards the beliefs and fantasies of the past, as its mental sanity is increased by a larger amount of verifiable facts. So for example, says the distinguished anthropologist James G. Frazer, 1854-1941:

"The belief in the possible impregnation of women without sexual intercourse appears to have been common, if not universal, among men at a certain stage of social evolution, and it is still held by many savages." (James G. Frazer. Note to Apollodorus 1.3.5.).

However, there are those in contemporary society who could not be called savages and yet assert that Mary, the mother of Jesus, conceived her child without regular sexual intercourse.

Now the myths, which have less to do with belief than some would think, affirm that the daughter of the god of the Sangarius river, which flows in Asia Minor into the Black Sea, conceived Attis not by sexual intercourse, but by taking the fruit of an almond tree that had grown up from the sexual organ of Agdistis, which the gods had cut off.

When Attis became a youth of beauty more than human, he was sent by some relatives to Pessinus in central Asia Minor near Mount Dindymus, to marry the king's daughter. However, when the wedding ceremony was being celebrated and all were singing, Agdistis made a sudden appearance, whereupon Attis, losing his mind, cut off his own genitals; and so did the king too.

When this happened, Agdistis repented and asked Zeus to grant that Attis' body should not decay; for as they say, Agdistis was himself in love with the youth. But whatever happened to that request, Attis was buried in the vicinity of Pessinus, where a temple was built to the Mother of the Gods, whom they called Agdistis although she is often identified with Rhea 1, Cronos' wife.

Others have said that Attis was a worshipper of the Mother of the Gods, and that the goddess asked him to guard her temple and keep his chastity, whereupon he promised obedience saying:

"If I lie ... may the love for which I break faith be my last love of all." (Ovid, Fasti 4.227).

And since promises are more often than not broken, Attis met the Naiad Sagaritis and turned her into his sweetheart. But the Mother of the Gods, who was well informed, by wounding the Naiad's tree destroyed Attis' sweetheart as well, since her fate was dependent on the tree's. This event, they say, and nothing else, is the reason why Attis lost his mind, imagining that his chamber's roof was falling in.

So being completely mad, Attis ran to the top of Mount Dindymus, uttering such words that let understand that he was seeing the ERINYES. Then he mangled his body with a sharp stone, and trailed his hair in the dust, crying as he tortured himself that he had deserved what he was going through. Then he shouted repeatedly:

"Ah, perish the parts that were my ruin." (Ovid, Fasti 4.240).

whereupon he cut off his genitals. Then Attis turned into a pine-tree, which is why this tree is pleasing to the Mother of the Gods.

Still others say that Attis was son of the Phrygian Calaus and eunuch from birth. Attis became known, they say, when he, after migrating to Lydia instructed his hosts in the orgies of the Mother. But the Lydians, for loving Attis and the Mother so much, had their tillage destroyed by a boar sent by Zeus; and this animal, they tell, killed Attis in addition to some Lydians.