[13]
The poets bear witness to such views as I have suggested. For instance, when Pindar, in the dithyramb which begins with these words,“In earlier times there marched1 the lay of the dithyrambs long drawn out,
”mentions the hymns sung in honor of Dionysus, both the ancient and the later ones, and then, passing on from these, says,“To perform the prelude in thy honor, great Mother, the whirling of cymbals is at hand, and among them, also, the clanging of castanets, and the torch that blazeth beneath the tawny pine-trees,
”he bears witness to the common relationship between the rites exhibited in the worship of Dionysus among the Greeks and those in the worship of the Mother of the gods among the Phrygians, for he makes these rites closely akin to one another. And Euripides does likewise, in his Bacchae, citing the Lydian usages at the same time with those of Phrygia, because of their similarity:“But ye who left Mt. Tmolus, fortress of Lydia, revel-band of mine, women whom I brought from the land of barbarians as my assistants and travelling companions, uplift the tambourines native to Phrygian cities, inventions of mine and mother Rhea.
”2And again,“happy he who, blest man, initiated in the mystic rites, is pure in his life, . . . who, preserving the righteous orgies of the great mother Cybele, and brandishing the thyrsus on high, and wreathed with ivy, doth worship Dionysus. Come, ye Bacchae, come, ye Bacchae, bringing down3 Bromius,4 god the child of god, out of the Phrygian mountains into the broad highways of Greece.
”5And again, in the following verses he connects the Cretan usages also with the Phrygian:“O thou hiding-bower6 of the Curetes, and sacred haunts of Crete that gave birth to Zeus, where for me7 the triple-crested8 Corybantes9 in their caverns invented this hide-stretched circlet,10 and blent its Bacchic revelry with the high-pitched, sweet-sounding breath of Phrygian flutes, and in Rhea's hands placed its resounding noise, to accompany the shouts of the Bacchae,11 and from Mother Rhea frenzied Satyrs obtained it and joined it to the choral dances of the Trieterides,12 in whom Dionysus takes delight.
”13 And in the Palamedes the Chorus says,14“Thysa, daughter of Dionysus, who on Ida rejoices with his dear mother in the Iacchic revels of tambourines.
”
1 Or perhaps "was drawled" (sc. from the lips of men; see Bergk, or Pind. Fr. 79 (Sandys)). Roberts (Dio. Hal. On Literary Composition 14) translates the verb "crept in" and Sandys (l.c.) "flowed."
3 The verb is also used in the sense of "bringing back home," and in the above case might be construed as a double entente.
4 i.e., "Boisterous" one.
6 Where Zeus was hid.
7 The leader of the Chorus is spokesman of the chorus, and hence of all the Greeks.
8 Referring to the triple rim of their helmets (cp. the triple crown of the Pope).
9 Name of the Phrygian priests of Cybele.
10 i.e., the tambourine.
11 They shouted "ev-ah!" (εὖα; cf. Lat. ovatio), as the Greek word shows.
12 "Triennial Festivals."
14 The reading and metrical arrangement of this corrupt passage is that of Nauck, Fr. 586.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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