Kourete

The Kuretes or Kouretes (Κουρῆτες) were nine dancers who venerate Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybele. A fragment from Strabo's Book VII[4] gives a sense of the roughly analogous character of these male confraternities, and the confusion rampant among those not initiated:

Many assert that the gods worshipped in Samothrace as well as the Kurbantes and the Korybantes and in like manner the Kouretes and the Idaean Daktyls are the same as the Kabeiroi, but as to the Kabeiroi they are unable to tell who they are.

These armored male dancers kept time to a drum and the rhythmic stamping of their feet. Dance, according to Greek thought, was one of the civilizing activities, like wine-making or music. The dance in armor (the "Pyrrhic dance" or pyrrhichios [Πυρρίχη]) was a male coming-of-age initiation ritual linked to a warrior victory celebration. Both Jane Ellen Harrison and the French classicist Henri Jeanmaire[6] have shown that both the Kouretes (Κουρῆτες) and Cretan Zeus, who was called "the greatest kouros (κοῦρος)",[7] were intimately connected with the transition of boys into manhood in Cretan cities.

The English "Pyrrhic Dance" is a corruption of the original Pyrríkhē or the Pyrríkhios Khorós "Pyrrhichian Dance". It has no relationship with the king Pyrrhus of Epirus, who invaded Italy in the 3rd century BC, and who gave his name to the Pyrrhic victory, which was achieved at such cost that it was tantamount to a defeat.

The Kouretes Daktyloi (Curetes, Dactyls) were three, five, or nine rustic daimones (spirits) appointed by Rhea to guard the infant god Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Krete (Crete). To keep the boy hidden from his cannibalistic father Kronos (Cronus), they drowned out his cries with a frenzied dance of clashing spear and shield. The Kouretes were gods of the wild mountainside, inventors of the rustic arts of metalworking, shepherding, hunting and beekeeping. They were also the first armoured warriors and gods of the orgiastic war-dance performed by the youths of Krete (Crete) and Euboia (Euboea).

The Kouretes were closely identified with, if not the same as, a number of other rustic daimones--namely, the Korybantes Euboioi (Euboean Corybantes), the Korybantes Samothrakioi (Samothracian Corybantes), the Kabeiroi(Cabeiri), as well as Hoplodamos and his Gigantes, and the Kourete Anytos (Curete Anytus). One of the Kouretes, Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus), was sometimes identified with Seilenos (Silenus), the elderly satyr companion of Dionysos. Another, Melisseus, appears to be have been connected with Aristaios (Aristaeus), discoverer of honey.