The Homeric Hymns · 16 of 31

Hymn XIV: To the Mother of the Gods

XIV. TO THE MOTHER OF THE GODS (6 lines)

(ll. 1-5) I prithee, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men. She is well-pleased with the sound of rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes.

Insight

The Mother of the Gods is the Phrygian Magna Mater, Cybele, who pleased her worshipers with the rattle of timbrels and the howl of flutes. Her cult came to Rome in 204 BCE during the Hannibalic War, and her ecstatic rites, including the self-castration of the priests called Galli, made the Roman senate uncomfortable enough to legislate restrictions. Catullus 63 tells the story of Attis castrating himself in her service. Patristic writers like Augustine in City of God 7 used the Galli as a stick to beat pagan religion with. The hymn is invoking, briefly and politely, a goddess whose actual cult was one of the wildest religious phenomena the Mediterranean produced, and whose ecstatic register would migrate, in transmuted form, into certain extreme strands of Christian asceticism.Catullus 63; Augustine City of God 7; M. J. Vermaseren Cybele and Attis

(l. 6) And so hail to you in my song and to all goddesses as well!