Cabeiri

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"Cabiri" redirects here. For other uses, see Cabiri (disambiguation).
Agamemnon, Talthybius and Epeius, relief from Samothrace, ca. 560 BC, Louvre

In

Hellenistic
period, eventually initiating Romans.

The ancient sources disagree about whether the deities of Samothrace were Cabeiri or not; and the accounts of the two cults differ in detail. But the two islands are close to each other, at the northern end of the Aegean, and the cults are at least similar, and neither fits easily into the

Olympic pantheon: the Cabeiri were given a mythic genealogy as sons of Hephaestus and Cabeiro.[6] The accounts of the Samothracian gods, whose names were secret, differ in the number and sexes of the gods: usually between two and four, some of either sex. The number of Cabeiri also varies, with some accounts citing four (often a pair of males and a pair of females), and some even more, such as a tribe or whole race of Cabeiri, often presented as all male.[7]

The Cabeiri were also worshipped at other sites in the vicinity, including

Asia Minor. One of these is posited to be Thessalonica and possibly was the cult of mysteries of which Paul warns against in his letters to the church there.[8] According to Strabo, Cabeiri are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos but also in other cities too.[9]

Etymology and origin

Etymology

In the past, the

pre-Greek origin.[16]

The name of the Cabeiri recalls Mount Kabeiros, a mountain in the region of Berekyntia in Asia Minor, closely associated with the Phrygian Mother Goddess. The name of Kadmilus (Καδμῖλος), or Kasmilos, one of the Cabeiri who was usually depicted as a young boy, was linked even in antiquity to Camillus, an old Latin word for a boy-attendant in a cult, likely a loan from the Etruscan language,[citation needed] which may be related to Lemnian.[17] However, according to Beekes, the name Kadmilus may be of pre-Greek origin, as seems to be the case with the name Cadmus.[18]

Origin

The Cabeiri's origins are unknown.

Phrygian.[21] It is not known who brought these deities to Greece, but it was probably a group of Greeks, perhaps only a family which settled on the countryside of Thebes.[22]

Depiction in literary sources

They were most commonly depicted as two people: an old man, Axiocersus, and his son, Cadmilus. Due to the cult's secrecy, however, their exact nature and relationship with other ancient Greek and Thracian religious figures remained mysterious. As a result, the membership and roles of the Cabeiri changed significantly over time, with common variants including a female pair (Axierus and Axiocersa) and twin youths (frequently confused with Castor and Pollux, who were also worshiped as protectors of sailors). Roman antiquarians identified the Cabeiri with the three Capitoline deities or with the Di Penates.[23]

Lemnos

The Lemnians were originally non-Greek; they were

mystery cults in the ancient world little survives to indicate what was involved in these initiation ceremonies; indeed, Hugh Bowden notes that on the basis of our evidence we do not know what happened at Lemnos beyond the fact of initiation, and that "we have no descriptions and nothing on which even to base speculation".[25] However, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Lemnos held an annual festival of the Cabeiri, lasting nine days, during which all the fires were extinguished and fire brought from Delos.[23]

The geographer Strabo reported (Geogr. 10,3,21) that in Lemnos, the mother (there was no father) of the Cabeiri was Kabeiro (Greek: Καβειρώ) herself, a daughter of Nereus (one of the "old men of the sea") and a goddess whom the Greeks might have called Rhea.

In general Greek myth identifies the Cabeiri as divine craftsmen, sons or grandsons of Hephaestus, who was also chiefly worshipped on Lemnos. Aeschylus wrote a tragedy called The Kabeiroi, which apparently featured the deities as a chorus greeting the Argonauts at Lemnos and the Argonauts' initiation into the cult of the Cabeiri.

Samothrace

The Samothracians were also originally non-Greek, and are associated with the Trojans and the Pelasgians; they used a foreign language in the temple through Julius Caesar's time.[26] Samothrace offered an initiatory mystery, which promised safety and prosperity to seamen. The secret of these mysteries has largely been kept; but we know that of three things about the ritual, the aspirants were asked the worst action they had ever committed.[clarification needed]

The mysteries of Samothrace did not publish the names of their gods; and the offerings at the shrine are all inscribed to the gods or to the great gods rather than with their names. But ancient sources

Karl Kerényi conjectured that Axieros was male, and the three gods were the sons of Axiokersa (Cadmilos, the youngest, was also the father of the three); Burkert disagrees.[28]

In Classical Greek culture the mysteries of the Cabeiri at Samothrace remained popular, though little was entrusted to writing beyond a few names and bare genealogical connections. Seamen among the Greeks might invoke the Cabeiri as "great gods" in times of danger and stress. The archaic sanctuary of Samothrace was rebuilt in Greek fashion; by classical times, the Samothrace mysteries of the Cabeiri were known at Athens.

hermae, and that in the sanctuary it was understood that the child of the Goddess, Cadmilus, was in some mystic sense also her consort. Varro also describes these twin pillars as Heaven and Earth, denying the vulgar error that they are Castor and Pollux.[citation needed
]

Thebes in Boeotia

At

Harmonia
, which took place there.

Myth

In myth, the Cabeiri bear many similarities to other fabulous races, such as the

Kuretes. These different groups were often confused or identified with one another since many of them, like the Cyclopes and Telchines, were also associated with metallurgy
.

Dactyls"). The Idaian Dactyls were a race of divine beings associated with the Mother Goddess and with Mount Ida, a mountain in Phrygia sacred to the goddess. Hesychius of Alexandria wrote that the Cabeiri were karkinoi ("crabs"). The Cabeiri as Karkinoi were apparently thought of as amphibious beings (again recalling the Telchines). They had pincers instead of hands, which they used as tongs
(Greek: karkina) in metalworking.

Notes

  1. ^ "Cabiri". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary.
  2. ^ Kabiri is the transliteration used in John Raffan's translation of Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985).
  3. ^ *Peck, Harry Thurston (1898). "Cabeiria". Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Tufts University: Perseus Project. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
  4. Kaukon tradition of Andania" (a polis in Messenia
    ).
  5. ^ "The inhabitants of Lemnos were called Tyrsenoi by the Greeks, and thus identified with the Etruscans, or alternatively with the Pelasgians." (Burkert 1985, eo. loc.).
  6. ^ Acusilaus, fr. 20; Pherecydes fr. 48; and Herodotus 3..37 are noted by Burkert.
  7. ^ Burkert, pp 281-84
  8. ISSN 0017-8160
    .
  9. ^ Strabo, Geography.
  10. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling: Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace. Stuttgart and Tübingen (Cotta) 1815, p. 110 sqq. (online text).
  11. ^ Noted by Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992, p 2 note 3).
  12. ^ Dasen, Veronique (2013). Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece. Oxford University Press. p. 195.
  13. ^ Buckert, Greek Religion (1985), p. 282 and notes on page 457.
  14. ^ a b Decharme, Paul (1884). Mythologie de la Grèce antique (in French). Garnier Frères. p. 263.
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-1-5275-9119-6
    .
  16. ^ R. S. P. Beekes. "The Origin of the Kabeiroi" Mnemosyne. Vol. 57, Fasc. 4 (2004: 465–477); Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 612.
  17. ^ The Aegean relations of the Etruscan language are denied at some length by Massimo Pallottino, in The Etruscans (tr. 1975) and elsewhere.
  18. ^ R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, pp. 613–4.
  19. ^ Wackernagel, Jacob. (1907) Zeitschrift fir vergleichende Sprrachforschung, XLI, 1907, pp. 317f
  20. ^ "The secret of the mysteries is rendered more enigmatic by the addition of a non-Greek, pre-Greek element" (Burkert 1985:281). Burkert does not intend to suggest that the pre-Greek component was added.
  21. ^ "Cabeiri". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  22. ISBN 978-1-134-53616-0
    .
  23. ^ a b Chisholm 1911, p. 916.
  24. ^ Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 281
  25. ISBN 9780691146386
    .
  26. Diodorus
    , 5.47.3, which says that their own language is still used in religion.
  27. scholium on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica i.916, for the connection of the four names of divinities recorded at Samothrace— Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos and Kadmilos — with Demeter, Persephone, Hades and Hermes
    respectively.
  28. ^ Kerényi, Gods of Greece 1951:86-7; Burkert Greek Religion 1985:283 and notes.

References

External links
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