190 STRABO. CASATTB. 473. son of Cabeira and Vulcan ; who had three sons, Cabeiri, (and three daughters,) the Nymphs Cabeirides. A According to Pherecydes, there sprung from Apollo and Rhetia nine Corybantes, who lived in Samothrace ; that from Cabeira, the daughter of Proteus and Vulcan, there were three Cabeiri, and three Nymphs, Cabeirides, and that each had their own sacred rites. But it was at Lemnos and Im- bros that the Cabeiri were more especially the objects of divine worship, and in some of the cities of the Troad ; their names are mystical. Herodotus 2 mentions, that there were at Memphis temples of the Cabeiri as well as of Vulcan, which were destroyed by Cambyses. The places where these daemons received divine honours are uninhabited, as Corybantium in the territory Hamaxitia belonging to the country of the Alexandrians, near Sminthium ; 3 and Corybissa in the Scepsian territory about the river Eureis, and a village of the same name, and the winter torrent .^Ethaloei's. 4 The Scepsian says, that it is probable that the Curetes and Corybantes are the same persons, who as youths and boys were employed to perform the armed dance in the worship of the mother of the gods. They were called Corybantes 5 from their dancing gait, and butting with their head (/co^Trroj/T-ac) ; by the poet they were called (3rjrap^oveg, " Come hither, you who are the best skilled Betarmones among the Phaeacians." 6 Because the Corybantes are dancers, and are frantic, we call those persons by this name whose movements are furious. 22. Some writers say that the first inhabitants of the country at the foot of Mount Ida were called Idaean Dac- 1 According to the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhod., Arg. 5, 917 per- sons were initiated into the mysteries of the Cabeiri in Samothrace. The Cabeiri were four in number; Axieros, Axiokersa, Axiokersos, and Cas- milos. Axieros corresponded to Demeter or Ceres, Axiokersa to Perse- phone or Proserpine, Axiokersos to Hades or Pluto, and Casmilos to Hermes or Mercury. See Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrace, T. W. I. Schelling, 1815; and the Classical Journal, vol. xiv. p. 59. 2 Herod, iii. 37. 3 Probably a temple of Apollo Smintheus.
- Corybissa, Eureis, and ^Ethaloeis are unknown.
5 They were called Curetes because they were boys, and KovprjTfg p,iv OTTO TOV Kopove elvai KaXovptvoi. Groskurd suspects these or similar words to have followed " Corybantes." 6 Od. viii. 250.
