Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

246 The Origin of the Olympic Games [ch.
called the Throne of Pelops ; and, lower down on the face of the
cliff, the sanctuary of the Mountain Mother, here worshipped
under the name of Mother Plastene 1 . But this was not the only
home of the legend of Tantalus. There is also a Mount Tantalus
And not only
in Lesbos, where some traits of the story reappear 2 .
so; but no less an authority than Aeschylus makes King Tantalus
reign on Mount Ida in Phrygia. The poet even transfers Sipylos
to the neighbourhood of Ida 3 .
Strabo complains of Aeschylus for making (as he says) this
'confusion'; but in another passage 4 Strabo himself tells us how
the confusion came about. It was due to identity of cults in the
two places. The Great Mother of Mount Sipylos was also the
Lady of Ida. 'The Berekyntes,' he says, 'and the Phrygians in
general, and the Trojans living at Ida worship Rhea with mystical
rites... and after the various places of her cult, they call her Idaea >
Dindymene, Sipylene, Pessinuntis, Kybele.' 'The Greeks,' he adds,
' call her attendants Kouretes!
This gives us a clue. It suggests a form of cult to which we
can refer the ritual of Tantalus' Feast—the cult, namely, which
prevailed all down the coast of Asia Minor, of the Great Mother
and her Child, with her attendant Kouretes or Korybantes—the
very cult which we have found established at the foot of the hill of
Kronos at Olympia.
Following this clue let us move southward again from Mount
Ida to Ephesus. Here we shall find an Olympianised form of this
same cult of the Mother and Child, flourishing throughout
historical antiquity 5 . This instance is specially important for us,
because here, at Ephesus, we have as a constituent part of the
cult, a banquet, a eranos feast, on the top of a mountain. Strabo's-
account 6 is as follows
:
On the coast near Ephesus, a little above the sea, lies Ortygia, a splendid
grove (aXaos) of trees of all sorts, mostly cypress. Through it flows the river
Kenchrios where they say Leto washed after her travail. For here legend
tells of the Birth, of the nurse Ortygia, of the Birth-place, where no one may
enter, and of the olive-tree close by where the goddess is said to have rested
after her travail.
1 Paus. v. 13. 7, and Frazer, ad loc.
2 In Lesbos we hear also of Thyestes (whose homonym in Argive legend was,
like Tantalus, concerned in a TfKvo