As the legend of Attis and Cybele may not be familiar to all, it may be well to give a brief abstract of it as found in Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Ovid, and the Christian writer Arnobius. Cybele, called also Agdistis, Rhea, Gê, or the Great Mother, was said to have been born from a rock accidentally fecundated by Zeus. On her first appearance she was hermaphrodite, but on the gods depriving her of her virility it passed into an almond-tree. The fruit of this was plucked by the virgin daughter of the river Sangarios, who, placing it in her bosom, became by it the mother of Attis, fairest of mankind. Attis at his birth was exposed on the river-bank, but was rescued, brought up as a goatherd, and was later chosen as a husband by the king’s daughter. At the marriage feast, Cybele, fired by jealousy, broke into the palace and, according to one version of the story, emasculated Attis who died of the hurt. Then Cybele repented and prayed to Zeus to restore him to life, which prayer was granted by making him a god. The ceremonies of the Megalesia celebrating the Death and Resurrection of Attis as held in Rome during the late Republic and early Empire, and their likeness to the Easter rites of the Christian Church are described in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society for October 1917.]
[Footnote 2: (οὗ) χάριν, “thanks to which.”]
[Footnote 3: μετέχιο τὰς ἀφορμὰς, a phrase frequent in Plato.]
[Footnote 7: Cruice thinks the name derived from the Adam Cadmon of the Jewish Cabala. But Adamas “the unsubdued” is an epithet of Hades who was equated with Dionysos, the analogue of Attis. Cf. Irenæus, I, 1.]
[Footnote 8: Salmon and Stähelin in maintaining their theory that Hippolytus’ documents were contemporary forgeries make the point that something like this hymn is repeated later in the account of Monoimus the Arabian’s heresy. The likeness is not very close. Cf. II, p. 107 _infra_.]
[Footnote 9: Origen (_cont. Celsum_, VI, 30) says the Ophites used to curse the name of Christ. Hence Origen cannot be the author of the _Philosophumena_.]
[Footnote 10: τὰ ὅλα. I am doubtful whether he is here using the word in its philosophic or Aristotelian sense as “entities necessarily differing from one another in kind,” or as “things of the universe.” On the whole the former construction seems here to be right.]