Rhea

• an old Italian name. Thus, Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor and mother of Romulus and Remus, Liv. 1, 3; Flor. 1, 1, 1; Prud. adv. Symm. 1, 174 (cf. Verg. A. 1, 276).—Hence comes the name of the fabled priestess Rhea in Verg. A. 7, 659.

• another name for Cybele, Ov. F. 4, 201: Rhea, quae Latiis Ops, Aus. Idyll. 12 de Deis, 2.

Ῥεία, Ῥείη, (or Ῥέη). The name as well as the nature of this divinity is one of the most difficult points in ancient mythology. Some consider Ῥέα to be merely another form of ἔρα, the earth, while others connect it with ῥέω, I flow (Plat. Cratyl. p. 401, &c.); but thus much seems undeniable, that Rhea, like Demeter, was a goddess of the earth. According to the Hesiodic Theogony (133; comp. Apollod. 1.1.3), Rhea was a daughter of Uranus and Ge, and accordingly a sister of Oceanus, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, Theia, Themis, and Mnemosyne. She became by Cronos the mother of Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Aides, Poseidon, and Zeus. According to some accounts Cronos and Rhea were preceded in their sovereignty over the world by Ophion and Eurynome ; but Ophion was overpowered by Cronos, and Rhea cast Eurynome into Tartarus. Cronos is said to have devoured all his children by Rhea, but when she was on the point of giving birth to Zeus, she, by the advice of her parents, went to Lyctus in Crete. When Zeus was born she gave to Cronos a stone wrapped up like an infant, and the god swallowed it as he had swallowed his other children. (Hes. Th. 446, &c.; Apollod. 1.1.5, &c.; Diod. 5.70.) Homer (Hom. Il. 15.187) makes only a passing allusion to Rhea, and the passage of Hesiod, which accordingly must be regarded as the most ancient Greek legend about Rhea, seems to suggest that the mystic priests of Crete had already formed connections with the more northern parts of Greece. In this manner, it would seem, the mother of Zeus became known to the Thracians, with whom she became a divinity of far greater importance than she had been before in the south (Orph. Hymn. 13, 25, 26), for she was connected with the Thracian goddess Bendis or Cotys (Hecate), and identified with Demeter. (Strab. x. p.470.)

The Thracians, in the mean time, conceived the chief divinity of the Samothracian and Lemnian mysteries as Rhea-Hecate, while some of them who had settled in Asia Minor, became there acquainted with still stranger beings, and one especially who was worshipped with wild and enthusiastic solemnities, was found to resemble Rhea. In like manner the Greeks who afterwards settled in Asia identified the Asiatic goddess with Rhea, with whose worship they had long been familiar (Strab. x. p.471; Hom. Hymn. 13, 31). In Phrygia, where Rhea became identified with Cybele, she is said to have purified Dionysus, and to have taught him the mysteries (Apollod. 3.5.1), and thus a Dionysiac element became amalgamated with the worship of Rhea. Demeter, moreover, the daughter of Rhea, is sometimes mentioned with all the attributes belonging to Rhea. (Eur. Hel. 1304.) The confusion then became so great that the worship of the Cretan Rhea was confounded with that of the Phrygian mother of the gods, and that the orgies of Dionysus became interwoven with those of Cybele. Strangers from Asia, who must be looked upon as jugglers, introduced a variety of novel rites, which were fondly received, especially by the populace (Strab. 1. c.; Athen. 12.553 ; Demosth. de Coron. p. 313). Both the name and the connection of Rhea with Demeter suggest that she was in early times revered as goddess of the earth.

Crete was undoubtedly the earliest seat of the worship of Rhea; Diodorus (5.66) saw the site where her temple had once stood, in the neighbourhood of Cnossus, and it would seem that at one time she was worshipped in that island even under the name of Cybele (Euseb. Chron. p. 56; Syncell. Chronogr. p. 125). The common tradition, further, was that Zeus was born in Crete, either on Mount Dicte or Mount Ida. At Delphi there was a stone of not very large dimensions, which was every day anointed with oil, and on solemn occasions was wrapped up in white wool; and this stone was believed to have been the one which Cronos swallowed when he thought he was devouring Zeus (Paus. 10.24.5). Such local traditions implying that Rhea gave birth to Zeus in this or that place of Greece itself occur in various other localities. Some expressly stated that he was born at Thebes (Tzetz. ad Lyc. 1194). The temple of the Dindymenian mother had been built by Pindarus (Paus. 9.25.3; Philostr. Icon. 2.12). Another legend stated that Rhea gave birth at Chaeroneia in Boeotia (Paus. 9.41.3), and in a temple of Zeus at Plataeae Rhea was represented in the act of handing the stone covered in cloth to Crones (Paus. 9.2.5). At Athens there was a temple of Rhea in the peribolos of the Olympieium (Paus. 1.18.7), and the Athenians are even said to have been the first among the Greeks who adopted the worship of the mother of the gods (Julian, Orat. 5). Her temple there was called the Metroum. The Arcadians also related that Zeus was born in their country, on Mount Lycaon, the principal seat of Arcadian religion (Paus. 8.36.2, 41.2; comp. Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 10, 16, &c.). Similar traces are found in Messenia (Paus. 4.33.2), Laconia (3.22.4), in Mysia (Strab. xiii. p.589), at Cyzicus (i. p. 45, xii. p. 575). Under the name of Cybele, we find her worship on Mount Sipylus (Paus. 5.13.4), Mount Coddinus (3.22.4), in Phrygia, which had received its colonists from Thrace, and where she was regarded as the mother of Sabazius. There her worship was quite universal, for there is scarcely a town in Phrygia on the coins of which she does not appear. In Galatia she was chiefly worshipped at Pessinus, where her sacred image was believed to have fallen from heaven (Herodian, 1.35). King Midas I. built a temple to her, and introduced festive solemnities, and subsequently a more magnificent one was erected by one of the Attali. Her name at Pessinus was Agdistis (Strab. xii. p.567). Her priests at Pessinus seem from the earliest times to have been, in some respects, the rulers of the place, and to have derived the greatest possible advantages from their priestly functions. Even after the image of the goddess was carried from Pessinus to Rome, Pessinus still continued to be looked upon as the metropolis of the great goddess, and as the principal seat of her worship. Under different names we might trace the worship of Rhea even much further east, as far as the Euphrates and even Bactriana. She was, in fact, the great goddess of the Eastern world, and we find her worshipped there in a variety of forms and under a variety of names. As regards the Romans, they had from the earliest times worshipped Jupiter and his mother Ops, the wife of Saturn. When, therefore, we read (Liv. 29.11, 14) that, during the Hannibalian war, they fetched the image of the mother of the gods from Pessinus, we must understand that the worship then introduced was quite foreign to them, and either maintained itself as distinct from the worship of Ops, or became united with it. A temple was built to her on the Palatine, and the Roman matrons honoured her with the festival of the Megalesia. The manner in which she was represented in works of art was the same as in Greece, and her castrated priests were called Galli.

The various names by which we find Rhea designated, are, "the great mother," "the mother of the gods," Cybele, Cybebe, Agdistis, Berecyntia, Brimo, Dindymene, "the great Idaean mother of the gods." Her children by Cronos areenumerated by Hesiod : under the name of Cybele she is also called the mother of Alce, of the Phrygian king Midas, and of Nicaea (Diod. 3.57; Phot. Bibl. 224). In all European countries Rhea was conceived to be accompanied by the Curetes, who are inseparably connected with the birth and bringing up of Zeus in Crete, and in Phrygia by the Corybantes, Atys, and Agdistis. The Corybantes were her enthusiastic priests, who with drums, cymbals, horns, and in full armour, performed their orgiastic dances in the forests and on the mountains of Phrygia. The lion was sacred to the mother of the gods, because she was the divinity of the earth, and because the lion is the strongest and most important of all animals on earth, in addition to which it was believed that the countries in which the goddess was worshipped, abounded in lions (comp. Ov. Met. 10.682). In Greece the oak was sacred to Rhea (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. 1.1124). The highest ideal of Rhea in works of art was produced by Pheidias; she was seldom represented in a standing posture, but generally seated on a throne, adorned with the mural crown, from which a veil hangs down. Lions usually appear crouching on the right and left of her throne, and sometimes she is seen riding in a chariot drawn by lions. (Comp. Curetes; Zeus; Cronos.) [L.S]

[Romulus.]

• , Ῥέα, Cybele, O.

(Ῥέα, Ep. and Ion. Ῥεία, Ῥείη, Ῥέη). A goddess whom the Greek legends identify as a representation of the fruitfulness of nature. She was the daughter of Uranus and Gaea, wife of her brother, the Titan Cronus, by whom she gave birth to the Olympian gods, Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Heré, Hestia, Demeter. For this reason she was generally called the “mother of the gods.” One of her oldest places of worship was Crete, where in a cave, near the town of Lyctus or else on Mounts Dircé or Ida, she was said to have given birth to Zeus (q.v.), and to have hidden him from the wiles of Cronus. The task of watching and nursing the new-born child she had intrusted to her devoted servants the Curetes, earth-born demons, armed with weapons of bronze, who drowned the cry of the child by the noise which they made by beating their spears against their shields. The name of Curetes was accordingly given to the priests of the Cretan Rhea and of the Idaean Zeus, who executed noisy war-dances at the festivals of those gods. In early times the Cretan Rhea was identified with the Asiatic Cybĕlé or Cybēbé, “the Great Mother,” a goddess of the powers of nature and the arts of cultivation, who was worshipped upon mountains in Mysia, Lydia, and Phrygia.

In the former character she was a symbol of the procreative power of nature; in the latter, she originated the cultivation of the vine and agriculture, together with all forms of social progress and civilization, which depend upon these. Thus she was regarded as the founder of towns and cities, and therefore it is that art represents her as crowned with a diadem of towers.

The true home of this religion was the Phrygian Pessinus, on the river Sangarius, in the district afterwards known as Galatia, where the goddess was called Agdistis (Strabo, p. 567) or Angdistis, from a holy rock named Agdus upon Mount Dindymus above the town. Upon this mountain, after which the goddess derived her name of Dindymené, stood her earliest sanctuary as well as her oldest effigy (a stone that had fallen from heaven), and the grave of her beloved Attis (q.v.). Her priests, the emasculated Galli, here enjoyed almost royal honour. In Lydia she was worshipped, principally on Mount Tmolus, as the mother of Zeus and the foster-mother of Dionysus. There was also a temple of Cybelé at Sardis. Her mythical train was formed by the Corybantes, answering to the Curetes of the Cretan Rhea; these were said to accompany her over the wooded hills, with lighted torches and with wild dances, amid the resounding music of flutes and horns and drums and cymbals. After these the priests of Cybelé were also called Corybantes, and the festivals of the goddess were celebrated with similar orgies, in the frenzy of which the participators wounded each other or, like Attis, mutilated themselves. Besides these there were begging priests, called Metragyrtae and Cybebi, who roamed from place to place as inspired servants and prophets of the Great Mother. On the Hellespont and on the Propontis, Rhea-Cybelé was likewise the chief goddess; in particular in the Troad, where she was worshipped upon Mount Ida as “the Idaean Mother,” and where the Idaean Dactyli (q.v.) formed her train. From Asia this religion advanced into Greece. After the Persian Wars it reached Athens, where in the Metroum, the temple of the Great Mother, which was used as a State record-office, there stood the ideal image of the goddess fashioned by Phidias (Pausan. i. 3. 5). The worship of Cybelé did not, however, obtain public recognition here, any more than in the rest of Greece, on account of its orgiastic excesses and the offensive habits of its begging priests. It was cultivated only by particular associations and by the lower ranks of the people.

In Rome the worship of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) was introduced for political reasons in B.C. 204, at the command of a Sibylline Oracle, and for the purpose of driving Hannibal out of Italy. An embassy was sent to bring the holy stone from Pessinus; a festival was founded in honour of the goddess, to be held on April 2-4 (the Megalesia, from the Greek Μεγάλη Μήτηρ=magna mater); and in 217 a temple on the Palatine was dedicated to her. The service was performed by a Phrygian priest, a Phrygian priestess, and a number of Galli (emasculated priests of Cybelé), who were allowed to pass in procession through the city in accordance with their native rites. Roman citizens were forbidden to participate in this service, though the praetor on the Palatine and private persons among the patricians celebrated the feast by entertaining one another, the new cult being attached to that of Maia or Ops. The worship of Cybelé gained by degrees an ever-wider extension, so that under the early Empire a fresh festival was instituted, from March 15-27, with the observance of mourning, followed by the most extravagant joy. In this festival associations of women and men and the religious board of the quindecimviri (q.v.) took part. In the first half of the second century A.D. the Taurobolia and Criobolia were added. In these ceremonies the person concerned went through a form of baptism with the blood of bulls and rams killed in sacrifice, with the object of cleansing him from pollutions and bringing about a new birth. The oak and pine were sacred to Rhea-Cybelé (see Attis), as also the lion. She was supposed to traverse the mountains riding on a lion, or in a chariot drawn by lions. In art she was usually represented enthroned between two lions, with the mural crown on her head and a small drum in her hand.

• daughter of Sky and Earth: Apollod. 1.1.2
• wanderings of: Paus. 8.10.1
• defended by giants: Paus. 8.32.5, Paus. 8.36.2
• marries Cronus, mother of Zeus: Apollod. 1.1.4
• gives Cronus a foal to swallow instead of infant Poseidon: Paus. 8.8.2, and a stone wrapt in swadding-clothes instead of infant Zeus: Paus. 8.8.2, Paus. 8.36.3, Paus. 9.2.7, Paus. 9.41.6, cf.Paus. 10.24.6
• gives Cronus a stone to swallow instead of the infant Zeus: Apollod. 1.1.7
• purified after birth of Zeus: Paus. 8.41.2
• entrusts infant Zeus to Dactyls or Curetes: Paus. 5.7.6
• purifies Dionysus, teaches him rites of initiation, and gives him his costume: Apollod. 3.5.1
• teaches Oenone the art of prophecy: Apollod. 3.12.5
• Mother, Phyllis gives Demophon a sacrament of: Apollod. E.6.15
• grotto of: Paus. 8.36.3
• women sacred to: Paus. 8.36.3
• temple of Cronus and Rhea at Athens: Paus. 1.18.7
• her seat at Cybela in Phrygia: Apollod. 3.5.1
• representations of Rhea in art: Paus. 8.47.3, Paus. 9.2.7