- morphoses," Book X) the pine tree is spoken of as
follows:
"Grata deum matri, siquidem Cybeleius Attis
Exuit hac hominem, truncoque induruit illo."[1]
The transformation into the pine tree is evidently a burial in the mother, just as Osiris was overgrown by the heather. Upon the Attis bas-relief of Coblenz Attis appears growing out of a tree, which is interpreted by Mannhardt as the "life-principle" of vegetation inherent in the tree. It is probably a tree birth, just as with Mithra. (Relief of Heddernheim.) As Firmicus observes, in the Isis and Osiris cult and also in the cult of the virgin Persephone, tree and image had played a rôle.[33] Dionysus had the surname Dendrites, and in Boeotia he is said to have been called [Greek: e)/ndendros], meaning "in a tree." (At the birth of Dionysus, Megaira planted the pine tree on the Kithairon.) The Pentheus myth bound up with the Dionysus legend furnishes the remarkable and supplementary counterpart to the death of Attis, and the subsequent lamentation. Pentheus,[34] curious to espy the orgies of the Maenades, climbed upon a pine tree, but he was observed by his mother; the Maenades cut down the tree, and Pentheus, taken for an animal, was torn by them in frenzy,[35] his own mother being the first to rush upon him. In this myth the phallic meaning of the tree (cutting down, castration) and its maternal significance (mounting and the
- ↑ Beloved of the mother of the gods, inasmuch as the Cybeline Attis
sheds his human shape in this way and stiffens into this tree trunk.
