e shape, with attendant lions, or
placed erect on a lion in the attitude of walking.

* E.g. at Mount Dindymus and at Pessinus, which latter place
was supposed to possess the oldest sanctuary of Cybele. The
Pessinus stone, which was carried off to Rome in 204 B.C.,
was small, irregular in shape, and of a dark colour. Another
stone represented Ida.

[Illustration: 097.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS BETWEEN LIONS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Ramsay.

A moon-god, Men, shared divine honours with her, and with a goddess
Nana whose son Atys had been the only love of Ma and the victim of her
passion. We are told that she compelled him to emasculate himself in
a fit of mad delirium, and then transformed him into a pine tree:
thenceforward her priests made the sacrifice of their virility with
their own hands at the moment of dedicating themselves to the service of
the goddess.*

* Nana was made out to be the daughter of the river
Sangarios. She is said to have conceived Atys by placing in
her bosom the fruit of an almond tree which sprang from the
hermaphrodite Agdistis. This was the form--extremely ancient
in its main features--in which the legend was preserved at
Pessinus.

[Illustration: 098.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS AND ATYS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Chantre. One of
the bas-reliefs at Iasilikiaia, to which we shall have
occasion to refer later on in Chapter III. of the present
volume.

The gods introduced from Thrace by the Phrygians showed a close affinity
with those of the purely Asianic peoples. Precedence was universally
given to a celestial divinity named Bagaios, Lord of the Oak, perhaps
because he was worshipped under a gigantic sacred oak; he was king of
gods and men, then-father,* lord of the thunder and the lightning, the
warrior who charges in his chariot.

* In this capacity he bore the surname Papas.

He, doubtless, allowed a queen-regent of the earth to share his throne,*
but Sauazios, another, and, at first, less venerable deity had thrown
this august pair into the shade.

* The existence of such a goddess may be deduced from the
passage in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that
Manes, first king of the Phrygians, was the son of Zeus and
Demeter.

[Illustration: 099.jpg THE GOD MEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SUN AND OTHER
DEITIES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from