Book 10
3.21
Acusilaüs,Acusilaüs (fl. fifth century B.C.) wrote works entitled History and Genealogies. Only fragments remain. the Argive, calls Cadmilus the son of Cabeiro and Hephaestus, and Cadmilus the father of three Cabeiri, and these the fathers of the nymphs called Cabeirides. PherecydesPherecydes (fl. in the fifth century B.C.) wrote a mythological and historical work in ten books. Only fragments remain. says that nine Cyrbantes were sprung from Apollo and Rhetia, and that they took up their abode in Samothrace; and that three Cabeiri and three nymphs called Cabeirides were the children of Cabeiro, the daughter of Proteus, and Hephaestus, and that sacred rites were instituted in honor of each triad. Now it has so happened that the Cabeiri are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos, but they are also honored in separate cities of the Troad; their names, however, are kept secret. HerodotusHdt. 3.37. says that there were temples of the Cabeiri in Memphis, as also of Hephaestus, but that Cambyses destroyed them. The places where these deities were worshipped are uninhabited, both the Corybanteium in Hamaxitia in the territory now belonging to the Alexandreians near Sminthium,13. 1. 48. and Corybissa in Scepsia in the neighborhood of the river Eurëeis and of the village which bears the same name and also of the winter torrent Aethalöeis. The Scepsian says that it is probable that the Curetes and the Corybantes were the same, being those who had been accepted as young men, or “youths,” for the war-dance in connection with the holy rites of the Mother of the gods, and also as “corybantes” from the fact that they “walked with a butting of their heads” in a dancing way.i.e., “Cory-bant-es” is here derived from the two verbs “coryptein” (“butt with the head”) and “bainein” (“walk” or “go”). These are called by the poet “betarmones”:“Harmony-walkers.”Come now, all ye that are the best ‘betarmones’ of the Phaeacians.Hom. Od. 8.250 And because the Corybantes are inclined to dancing and to religious frenzy, we say of those who are stirred with frenzy that they are “corybantising.”
