A Cabiric Rite

Author(s): Arthur Darby Nock

Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1941), pp. 577-581
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
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A CABIRIC RITE
K. LEHMANN-HARTLEBEN'S
reports on his excavations at Samothrace
are most welcome to all students of ancient religion.' The cult of the Cabiri attracted great and growing interest in the Graeco-Roman world: the fact that alex
sacra was set up in Latin as well as Greek 2 (about 00 A.D.), is even more significant
than the abundance of the records of initiation. We may hope that further excavation will throw light on some of the problems outstanding. What was the relation
of the various buildings in the precinct to one another and to the cult? 3 Did the
model of Eleusis (with the prestige which accrued to it from the literary and cultural
preeminence of Athens) affect the Cabiric mysteries in the Hellenistic period (e.g.,
was the grade of epoples copied from Eleusis)? 4 Were the Cabiric rites at any time
deemed to guarantee happiness in the afterlife? 5 And did the glorious gifts of the
Cabiri (Orph. Arg. 2~7)include more than safety at sea, good luck in perils and ventures of various kinds, and greater righteousness? 6
In the meantime, provisional comment may be made on one point in the second
report - the wooden frame (strengthened by a stone ring), 3.95 m. in diameter, in
what is there called the Anaktoron. Lehmann-Hartleben compares the wooden platPROFESSOR

1AJA. 1939, pp. 133 ff.; 1940, pp. 328 ff. Professor Lehmann-Hartleben, as also his fellow-workers,
Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Holsten and Miss Phyllis Williams, and Professor Campbell Bonner, Drs.
S. Dow and G. M. A. Hanfmann have given me generous help.
2
I do not know any strict analogy: the warning against entering the inner court of the temple at
Jerusalem was necessary in view of the death penalty.
3 Presumably the precinct was used for other ceremonies and not only for the various grades of
initiation and for the annual festival. We may compare the complex of buildings in the precinct at
Eleusis and, above all (as O. Conze remarked, Archdiol.Unters. auf Samothrakeii, p. 26), the precinct
of Despoina, etc., near Akakesion as described by Pausan. viii, 37.
4At Eleusis epopteia was traditional and it would appear that initiates commonly proceeded to it:
at Samothrace apparently a limited proportion did so.
Professor Lehmann-Hartleben informs me that he does not hold to his suggestion that the northern
part of his Anaktoron was the place of epopteia. In Roman times, at least, epopteiasometimes followed
initiation on the same day. May it be that after the initiation proper there was a special proclamation
after which only those who desired epopteia stayed for it? These ceremonies were not
(-rrp6ppnacs5),
necessarily very protracted: Pausanias' initiation at Akakesion cannot have taken very long, and, whatever the Cabiric myesis at Pergamon was, all the ephebes received it in a single day (Dittenberger,
Or. gr. inscr. sel. 764).
On Eleusinian influences at Samothrace cf. L. R. Farnell in Hastings, Enc. Rel. Eth. vii, p. 631.
, This can be argued on the following grounds: (1) the association of Hermes with these rites (F.
Chapouthier ap. P. Collart-P. Devambez, BCH. lv, 1931, p. 180: but if you had to find a Greek equivalent of the subordinate Cabiric deity Kadmilos, whom else could you choose?); (2) the exigencies of
competition with other mysteries (Farnell, 1.c., p. 6392:certainly Samothrace had a capacity for propaganda, cf. n. 6, but in the extant evidence this aspect is not mentioned, while as far as Eleusis was
concerned, it was emphasized);

(3) Orphic Hymns 38.920 ff. KoupfirEs KopipavT-rEs . . . ?v Iapoep

KT,
avaKTES
.TWvoiciavaol, ulYXoTrp6ool(but ~uXorp6poi is an epithet of the winds, cf. 16.3, and
means "sustaining life": we may compare also 38.3 3cpoy6vol rrvoial, IG. xii, iii, 1334 Trav avPcp
1a
The Orphic Hymns show no interest in the afterlife); (4) the
vXs.
rpq)-ral Kai &p'
E-iTa
the cult, which fits but does not prove the assumption; (5) the identification of the
chthonic nature of lXiOU,
Cabiric triad with Demeter, Persephone, Hades (Schol. in Ap. Rhod. i, 916-18: cf. A. Schober, JOAI.
xxix, 1934, pp. 13 ff. on the frieze of the New Temple): this may be a pure hypothesis, but cannot be
6 Diod Sic. v, 49.6: Schol. in Ap. Rhod. i, 916-18.
ignored. Non liquet.
577
. .

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OF AMERICA

578

ARTHUR DARBY NOCK

form, in ipso aedis sacrae meditullio ante deae simulacrum constitutum tribunal
(Apul. Met. xi, 24), on which Lucius after his initiation stood to receive the
ligneumin
homage of the faithful, and suggests that the Cabiric initiate stood on this platform
and was presented to the community.
This is certainly possible. Constitutummight seem to imply that the platform was
a temporary one, erected for this specific occasion, but the verb constituo is used of
permanent placing 7 and tribunal, although in Plin. NH. xvi, 3, denoting a temporary platform, is commonly used of a permanent structure for public, judicial, military, theatrical or religious purposes.8 On the whole, I think it likely that this tribunal was a temporary structure,9 but the ceremony is attested, and a sanctuary in
which anything of the sort was regular might well have a permanent tribunal.
With it we can compare the adoration accorded to a man who had just received
the taurobolium,the acclamation in certain rites of the Near East to the newly baptized Christian, 10 after he had received the holy oil of confirmation, and the homage
paid in modern times to a Catholic priest who has said his first Mass. Now that the
graffiti of the second Mithraeum at Dura-Europos have proved nymphos to be the
name of a Mithraic grade, we might be tempted to interpret (cV)>8E v4P1E XaIpE
1 in Firmicus Maternus de err. prof. rel. 19, as
vX4)E XalpE vEov qcos5
referring to a
similar act of homage, but this is unlikely. Nymphos denoted an early grade, the
second; the acclamation, if such it be, might come from the initiator or initiators

and not from the congregation, and Firmicus clearly thinks of the words as addressed
to a god.
In any case, the initiation of Lucius represents a distinctive ceremony. We do not
know how common it was: the Isiac initiates of Plutarch's treatise Concerning Isis
and Osiris are simply people who have witnessed the ordinary sacred drama of the
7E.g. Hygin. Astron. ii, 7: lyra inter sidera constituta est; Cic. Scaur. 46.
8 V. Chapot in Dar.-Saglio s.v. Tribunal; E. Weiss-Fr. Lammert in RE. vi, A 924928
ff.; H. Dessau,
Inscr. lat. sel. iii, p. 904 s.v. (tribunal in Tac. Ann. i, 18 refers to a temporary structure, but one which
corresponded to regular legionary structures: A. von Domaszewski, Abh. rom. Rel., pp. 86 ff.). The
extended use of tribunal was common, and Apuleius is not using a definite metaphor.
9The "prothesis" at the back of the Iseum at Eretria (N. Papadakis, AETr. i, 1915, pp. 190 and 116,
fig. !2) which I compared with this tribunal (Conversion,9294)seems rather to have carried votives.
Nor can we compare the objects, resembling footstools, on which priests of Isis are represented in the
reliefs on columns from her temple in the Campus Martius (R. Lanciani, BullComm. xi, 1883, p. 49,
pl. X: O. Marucchi ap. H. S. Jones, Cat. Capitoline Museum, 360: J. Leipoldt, Religionen in der
Umwelt des Urchristentums, in H. Haas, Bilderatlas z. Religionsgeschichte,pt. 9-11, Abb. 60-61; I
take it that their purpose is architectural), or the balcony from which gesticulating spectators are
watching an Egyptian religious dance, on a relief from a tomb in Aricia (R. Paribeni, NS. 1919, pp. 106
ff.: CAHI.Plates v, p. 160 f.). K. Kerenyi (cf. O. Weinreich, Phil. Woch. 1995, p. 694) brought into this
connection the tribunal to which Trimalchio was raised by Mercurius in Petron. 29,5: but 71,9 shows
that the tribunal of municipal officials is meant.
10 Th. Michels, Jahrbuchf. Liturgiewissenschaftviii, 1928, pp. 76 ff.
11
(aQVS) is due to H. Diels ap. A. Dieterich-O. Weinreich, Mithrasliturgie 3, p. !256; F. Cumont,
CRAI. 1934, p. 108, prefers cISE: his discussion clarified the whole problem of this grade: cf. F.
Cumont-M. Rostovtzeff, Excavations at Dura-Europos, vii/viii, p. 123; F. J. D6lger, Antike u. Christenturnv, 1936, pp. 3 f.; 287 f.-ostenderunt cryfios CIL. vi, 751a; last discussed by C. I. M. I. van Beek in
Pisciculi

. . . Franz Joseph Dolger . . dargeboten, pp. 41 ff. is presumably identical with tradiderunt

chryflos (CIL. vi, 753; four years later) but has defied interpretation: cf. Rostovtzeff, Mhm. div. say.
Acad. Inscr. xiii, 396 for a possible parallel (but the interpretation of F. J. Ddlger, IXGYX,ii, 426, n.
1, deserves consideration. Cf. bibliography in G. Kazarow, AA. 1936, p. 75 f.).

A CABIRIC RITE

579

finding of Osiris and who have attached to it an importance such as belonged to the
witnessing of the Eleusinian drama. As an initiate who had received this personal
did the men who had acrite, Lucius had a distinct status in the community-so
cepted the expense of the taurobolium. An epoptes at Samothrace might be in a somewhat comparable situation, since almost certainly his religious dignity involved
additional expenditure.12
Nevertheless, I should like to suggest another possibility. Plato Euthydem. 077D
informs us of a telete of the Corybantes, called thronosis, in which the initiate sat
on a throne and a dance was performed around him prior to his initiation,13 and someThe essence of the ceremony
thing of the sort is parodied in Aristoph. Nub.
ff.14
-50
seems to lie in the making of a circle around a man (cf. the word TreplKae1ipco) and
in the projected energy of music and the dance., The Corybantic ritual is known at
Erythrae to have included a washing of "those being initiated" 16and belongs to the
fairly extensive category of rituals of purification-proceedings
which were, so to
speak, medical, as well as sacramental.
What has this to do with Samothrace? To be sure, when Statius refers to religious
dances on Samothrace,
modo quo Curetes in actu
quoque pii Samothraces eunt,
although the word pii makes it almost certain that he is thinking of Cabiric rites,
the context suggests that he is referring not to a purificatory dance, but to an ordinary
interlacing choral movement."7 Yet Cybele, who is also Rhea, was goddess of Corybantes and Curetes alike and has a predominant place on the coins of Samothrace: 18
and, though the goddess of the Cabiric cult was probably not called Cybele, she
12

Lehmann-Hartleben, AJA. 1940, p. 357.

13Cf. K. Latte, De saltationibus Graecorum,p. 95 f.; Dio Prus. xii, 33 (i, p. 163, v. Arnim) and Hesych.

s.v. ep6vcoais may well be derived from Plato: they add nothing.
14A. Dieterich, Kleine Schriften, pp. 117 ff.
15Cf. S. Eitrem, Opferritus . . d. Griechenu. Rdmer,pp.
-8 f. and his whole discussion of the powers
ascribed to circular motion. For purificatory dances, cf. P. Boyance, Le culte des Muses, and K. Latte,
De saltationibus Graecorum,p. 31, n. 2 (on the dance called telesias. It was a war-dance, popular in
Macedonia, but may once have implied something like a telete, and perhaps akin to the Corybantic
dance. The secularization of a dance is natural enough). The fact that the enthronement comes before
and not after initiation seems to me to exclude the suggestion of lmmisch (in Roscher's Lex. ii, p.
1616) that the man enthroned was assimilated to Dionysus. The dances of Corybantes or Curetes
around the young god were always regarded as protective: cf. H. Usener, Ki. Schr. iv, p. 188 f. and for
more material A. B. Cook, Zeus i, p. 153 (the ivory pyxis mentioned ib., n. 5, now at Bologna, is
ascribed to the fifth century of our era: P. Ducati, Museo civico di Bologna, p. 94). That Dionysus is
sometimes seated or enthroned during the process proves nothing: was it not a natural way of representing a god?
16Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "Nordionische Steine," Abh. Berlin, 1909, p. 33; J. Poerner, Diss. phil.
Hal. xxii, ii, p. 308 f.
17 Ach. ii, 157 = i, 831. O. Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des ThrakischenMeeres, p. 63, compared this
passage with a relief from Samothrace, thought to come from the Old Temple, on which we see women
in a formal dance (Conze, Archdol. Unters. ii, pl. 9: cf. Ed. Schmidt, ArchaistischeKunst in Griechenland u. Rom, p. 39 f. and Chapouthier, Les Dioscures, p. 157): cf. the Roman derivation of the Salii from
Samothrace (Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 1299: Geiger, RE. IA, 1877). Lucian asserts (Saltat. 15) TEXET~iV
a-pxicav

aPXa

Ia
0oJElaVc
8

crrT1V
EIpEIVa &VEvJ6pX'IECAS.
1ECOS.
TVEpVVV
PX

18Beschreibungd. ant. Miinzen, Berlin, i, p. 284 f.; Head, Hist. Num. 2, p. 263: K. Regling, Z.f. Num.
xxxviii, 1928, p. 102 f. I accept Professor Lehmann-Hartleben's view that these coins do not prove
anything as to the identity of the goddess of the Cabiric cult.

580

ARTHUR DARBY NOCK

surely was, or became, a cognate figure. The title of a lost Orphic work, Thronismoi
mietrooi,'l suggests that such ritual fell within Cybele's sphere, and that is not all.
From Pherecydes onwards ancient writers often assimilate Cabiri and Corybantes,20
and Strabo (x, pp. 466-67) makes it clear that there was no little resemblance
between the emotional ceremonies of Cabiri, Curetes, and Corybantes, as well as
between popular concepts of Corybantes, Curetes, and Cabiri as identified with
Dioscuri. Zeus was Zeus, and Athena was Athena, but Anakes or Cabiri or Dioscuri
or Corybantes were indeterminate entities: in spite of their supposed power to aid,
they were in the main minor deities, and they could easily be put in one category.21
They were all concerned with deliverance, in one way or another, and Cabiri,
Dioscuri, and Curetes alike became more widely prominent in the Hellenistic age:
we can imagine Cabiri or Curetes absorbing Corybantic rites.22 This is not exactly
what has often been meant by the term syncretism, a fusion of deities once sharply
distinguished: it is the pervasive influence of a category of ritual and representation:
Dionysus is the classic example.23
Whether thronismos was or was not employed in the cult of the Cabiri, it would
certainly have been in place, as a sequel to the enquiry into the guilt of would-be
initiates 24 and as a myesis preliminary to admission to the mysteries proper. Professor Lehmann-Hartleben, when I put this idea before him, drew my attention to
the fact that the construction of the platform, for which no precise date between
500 B.c. and the beginning of the Hellenistic period can yet be given, is characterized
by its "double bottom": inside the supporting ring of hard field stones there must, he
19 0. Kern, Orphicorumfragmenta, p. 298. Cf. W. Schmid-O. Stathlin, Gesch. griech. Litt., i, pp. 347,
575, n. 2, on the Enthronismoi, ascribed by Suidas to Pindar, as possibly connected with his interest in
the cult of the Mother of the gods. Dittenberger, SIG.3 1009, n. 12, suggests that the reference is to the
installation of priests: but such occasions can seldom have been thought important enough for people
to pay for Pindar's services to glorify them. The same consideration tells also against the view that the
songs were connected with this type of purificatory ritual, unless we suppose the personal devotion to
the Mother and her supposed powers of healing (on which cf. Latte, op. cit., p. 96 f.), indicated in Pyth.
.iii, 77, to be a sufficient explanation. E. Hiller, Ilerm. xxi, 1886, pp. 357 ff. urged that the title and
Bakchika, which follows in Suidas, were interpolated from the catalogue of Orphic writings.
20 In H.
means the Cabiri. In general, cf. J. Poerner, 1.c., pp.
Orph. 38, 20: KoupfiTEsKopPf3avTEs
367 ff.; Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 472, n. 3; F. Chapouthier, Les Dioscures au serviced'une
dkesse,pp. 154, 172, 234, n. 6, 241. Of course Curetes and Corybantes had different backgrounds and,
what was more, different names; various texts (Poerner, pp. 356 if., 372) show that this was not wholly
forgotten. Nevertheless, even a late oracle of Apollo (of Claros: Ch. Picard, BCH. xlvi, 1922, pp. 190
ff.) speaks of the Cabiri as rendering to the infant Zeus the service commonly ascribed to the Curetes
(Kaibel, Epigr. gr. 1035).
21 Hence their identification with the Idaean
Dactyls and the Lares. Cf. also Pausan. x, 38,7 on the
telete of the Anaktes at Amphissa: some called them the Dioscuri, some the Curetes, "but those who
think that they know rather better, the Cabiri" (with Nilsson, Griech.Feste, p. 422, and Chapouthier,
op. cit., pp. 180 f.): Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Glaubed. Hellenen i, p. 99, n. 1, on Kaio', who may be
Corybantes.
22 Cf. J.
Poerner, 1.c. p. 294, n., on the Curetic dyvEpXj5 f3s1'apiou: ib. p. 293; Ch. Picard, Ephese et
Claros, p. 299; J. Keil, in Anatolian Studies . . W. H. Buckler, p. 120 f. on 6Xo\XOKvrpova V1E
in a Curetic text; Lobeck, op. cit., pp.?..640
OTaEvvXCos
nKTE-Ecacrav rTatvrTTpa wvrav
oK-r0caTTTav
ff.; also Dionys. Hal. Demosth.2 (i, p. 176, 20, Usener-Radermacher).
23 For the use of the Curetic type cf. O. Walter, JOAI. xxx,
1938, pp. 53 ff.; A. B. Cook Zeus ii, p. 587
(in Caria); iii, pp. 1127 f., fig. 886. We may compare the spread of the type discussed by Chapouthier,
op. cit. For Dionysus at Samothrace cf. Conze, Arch. Unt. i, 27, Chapouthier, BCH. xlix, 1925, 261.
24 Cf. R.
Pettazoni, La confessione dei peccati iii, pp. 163 if.

A CABIRIC RITE

581

argues, have been a hollow interior space and "the most natural explanation would
be that it was a resounding space which contributed to the effect of beating the
ground in dances. It is exactly this feature, after all, which is characteristic of the
Corybantic dances." 25Yet the suggestion is no more than a possibility.
ARTHUR DARBY NOCK
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
25 Dr. S. Dow draws
my attention to the size of the platform as an argument for the hypothesis here
advanced.