Papers mentions Ovid, but surely the pre-eminent exploration of this theme in classical literature is the work of Gaius Valerius Catullus, namely the 63rd Song (Attis). This is C.H. Sisson's translation of Carmen 63 from The Poetry of Catullus, (New York: Orion, 1967), but there are many other versions to be found on the web.
Carried in a fast ship over profound seas
Attis, eager and hurried, reached the Phrygian grove,
The goddess's dark places, crowned with woodland.
And there, exalted by amorous rage, his mind gone,
He cut off his testicles with a sharp flint.
While the ground was still spotted with fresh blood
Quickly took in her snowy hands a tambourine
Such as serves your initiates, Cybele, instead of a trumpet,
And shaking the hollow calf-hide with delicate fingers,
Quivering, she began to sing to the troop this:
"Go together, votaresses, to the high groves of Cybele.
Go together, wandering herd of the lady of Dindymus.
Quick into exile, you looked for foreign places
And, following me and the rule I had adopted,
You bore with the salt tide and the violence of the high sea
And emasculated your bodies from too much hatred of Venus:
Delight the lady's mind with your errant haste.
Overcome your reluctance: together
Go to the Phrygian shrine of Cybele, to her groves
Where the voice of cymbals sounds, the tambourines rattle,
Where the Phrygian piper sings with the deep curved pipe,
Where Maenads wearing ivy throw back their heads,
Where they practice the sacred rites with sharp yells.
Where they flutter around the goddess's cohort:
It is there we must go with our rapid dances."
As Attis, the counterfeit woman, sang this to her companions,
The choir howled suddenly with tumultuous tongues.
The tambourine bellows, the cymbals clash again;
The swift troop moves off to Ida with hurrying feet.
Crazy, panting, drifting, at her last gasp,
Attis with her tambourine leads them through the opaque groves
Like an unbroken heifer refusing the yoke:
The swift votaresses follow their swift-footed leader.
When they reach Cybele's shrine, feeble and worn,
From too much toil they take their rest without bread (Ceres).
Sleep covers their eyes with a heavy blanket;
Their rabid madness subsides to a girlish quiet.
But when the golden sun with his streaming eyes
Purified the white sky, hard land, wild sea,
And drove away the shadows of night with his thundering horses,
Attis was aroused and Sleep went quickly from her
Back to the trembling arms of the goddess Pasithea.
Then from her girlish quiet, with no hurrying madness,
Attis remembered what she had done
And saw in her lucid mind what was missing and where she was.
Tempestuously she turned back to the shore.
There, looking at the open sea with tearful eyes,
With grief in her voice she addressed her native land:
"Land which begot me, land which brought me forth,
I am abject to abandon you like a runaway slave.
My feet have carried me to the groves of Ida
To be among snow in the cold lairs of wild beasts;
I shall visit their violent haunts.
Where, O my land, can I imagine you are?
My eye desires you and narrows as it turns toward you
In this short interval when my mind is unfrenzied.
Shall I be carried to the forests, from my far-off home?
Away from country, goods, friends, family?
From the Forum, palaestra, racecourse, and gymnasium?
There is nothing for me but misery.
What shape is there that I have not had?
A woman now, I have been man, youth, and boy;
I was athlete, the wrestler.
There were crowds round my door, my fans slept on the doorstep;
There were flowers all over the house
When I left my bed at sunrise.
Shall I be a waiting maid to the gods, the slave of Cybele?
I a Maenad, I a part of myself, I impotent?
Shall I live above the snow line on green Ida?
Shall I pass my life under the rocky peaks of Phrygia
Where the doe runs in the woods, where the boar mooches in the glade?
I regret now, now, what I have done, I repent of it, now!"
As these words hurried away from her pink lips,
Bringing a new message to the ears of the gods,
Cybele, letting her lions off the leash
And urging forward the beast on the left hand,
Said,"Get on, be fierce, see that he's driven mad;
Make him insane enough to return to the forest
He has had the impertinence to want to be out of my power.
Come on, lash around with your tail till you hurt yourself:
Make the whole neighborhood ring with your bellowing roar.
Be fierce, shake the red mane on your muscular neck."
Thus the threatening Cybele, and she wound the leash round her hand.
The beast stirs up his courage and rouses himself to fury.
He is off, he roars, he breaks up the undergrowth.
When he came to the wet sand on the whitening shore
And saw tender Attis by the waters of the sea,
He charged: Attis, mad, flew into the wild woods:
There, for the rest of her life, she lived as a slave.
Great Goddess, Goddess Cybele, Goddess lady of Dindymus,
May all your fury be far from my house.
Incite the others, go. Drive other men mad. |
