21.

But Acusilaus, the Argive, mentions a Camillus, the [Pg 190]

[CAS. 473] son of Cabeira and Vulcan; who had three sons, Cabeiri, (and three daughters,) the Nymphs Cabeirides.741

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 Imbros that the Cabeiri were more especially the objects of divine worship, and in some of the cities of the Troad; their names are mystical.

Herodotus742 mentions, that there were at Memphis temples of the Cabeiri as well as of Vulcan, which were destroyed by Cambyses. The places where these dæmons received divine honours are uninhabited, as Corybantium in the territory Hamaxitia belonging to the country of the Alexandrians, near Sminthium;743 and Corybissa in the Scepsian territory about the river Eureïs, and a village of the same name, and the winter torrent Æthaloeïs.744

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 Corybantes745 from their dancing gait, and butting with their head (κορύπτοντας); by the poet they were called βητάρμονες,

“Come hither, you who are the best skilled Betarmones among the Phæacians.”746

Because the Corybantes are dancers, and are frantic, we call those persons by this name whose movements are furious.