Agdistis

A mythical being connected with the Phrygian worship of Attis or Atys. Pausanias1 relates the following story about Agdistis.

On one occasion Zeus unwittingly begot by the Earth (Gaea) a superhuman being which was at once man and woman, and was called Agdistis. The gods dreaded it and unmanned it, and from its severed genitals (αὶδοῖα) there grew up an almond-tree. Once when Nana, the daughter of the river god Sangarius, was gathering the fruit of this tree, she put some almonds into her bosom; but here the almonds disappeared, and she became the mother of Attis, who was of such extraordinary beauty, that when he had grown up Agdistis fell in love with him. His relatives, however, destined him to become the husband of the daughter of the king of Pessinus, whither he went accordingly. But at the moment when the hymeneal song had commenced, Agdistis appeared, and Attis was seized by a fit of madness, in which he unmanned himself; the king who had given him his daughter did the same. Agdistis now repented her deed, and obtained from Zeus the promise that the body of Attis should not become decomposed or disappear.

This is, says Pausanias, the most popular account of an otherwise mysterious affair, which is probably part of a symbolical worship of the creative powers of nature.

A hill of the name of Agdistis in Phrygia, at the foot of which Attis was believed to be buried, is mentioned by Pausanias.2 According to Hesychius3 and Strabo,4 Agdistis is the same as Cybele, who was worshiped at Pessinus under that name. A story somewhat different is given by Arnobius.5

❧

References

Notes

  1. Description of Greece vii, 17.5.
  2. ibid. i, 4.5.
  3. s.v.
  4. xii, 567; comp. x, 469.
  5. Adversus Nationes ix, 5.4; comp. Minucius Felix, 21.

Source

  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.