BOOK III. OF THE DEIFIED PATRIARCHS. HEAD IV. OF THE CABEIRI: THEIR NAME AND PARENTAGE.

×It were premature, in the present stage of the inquiry, to attempt more than a statement of what may be affirmed, and of what may not be affirmed, respecting the name of the Cabeiri and the persons from whom they are said to have sprung; for the name has been derived by writers of repute from sources which have nothing in common, and the parentage assigned to them is not one parentage but several, so that it is not without hesitation that I can say what, in the first instance, is to be understood by the persons whose name and descent are in question.¹ The two questions are commonly treated together, as though the one must determine the other; and it will appear in the sequel that the practice, whatever convenience it may offer, has had the effect of rendering each inquiry dependent upon a decision which neither has been able to supply. I propose therefore to set down, in the order which the subject appears to allow, the testimonies respecting the name; then those respecting the descent; to examine such opinions of the moderns as have been grounded upon them; and to indicate, with such brevity as the subject admits, the view which I am at present disposed to entertain, reserving its proof to the heads which follow, and in particular to that which treats of the number. NB-25-010 NB-25-017

×Strabo, in that portion of his tenth book which is occupied with the Phrygian and Idaean rites, supposes the name of the Cabeiri, together with those of the Corybantes, of Pans, of Satyrs and of Tityri, to have been framed by the first celebrants of the rites in conformity with the sounds of the flute, of the castanets, of the cymbals and of the drums, with their acclamations and with the stamping of their feet; and he reckons it, with others, among the names by which the ministers, the choral dancers and the attendants upon the sacred ceremonies were designated (Strab. lib. x.).² To this opinion, which makes the name a sound, and the sound younger than the rite which it accompanied, Selden has opposed a derivation of another order, deducing from a Hebrew word signifying great and mighty, which passed afterwards into the Arabic, the name of the gods of the Samothracians, whom he understands to be, as the title of his chapter indicates, the Cabeiri, and whom he glosses as the Mighty (Selden, de Dis Syris, synt. ii. cap. 4).³ The two derivations are not of one kind: by the one the name is an imitation of noises, by the other a title of power; and since the second would make the name older than the rites which bear it, and the first younger, it is not possible to receive both, nor, as will presently be seen, to receive either without a prior determination of the question which each was designed to resolve. NB-25-010

×The fault of each is of the kind which it has been the business of the preceding heads to name. Strabo, in deriving the name from the noise of the instruments, supposes that the persons who bore it were already ministers and attendants of the rites, which is the point that was to be established; and Selden, in deriving it from a Hebrew word, supposes that the word had reached the Samothracians, which could be shown only if the name were first known to be Hebrew. Nor is the matter simplified by that comprehensive view of the companies on which a more recent writer has founded his reasoning; for Mr. Faber, whose third chapter bears the title "The Identity of the Cabiri, Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscori, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei Dactyli, Telchines, Lares, Penates, Manes, Titans, and Aletae," asserts in that place that all these companies are one (Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. iii.).⁴ Selden speaks of a name, and Mr. Faber of the companies; and neither the one nor the other furnishes the number of those to whom the name belongs. Whether the Mighty of Selden are the Cabeiri of Samothrace only, or all those whom Mr. Faber enumerates, is a question which the passages as they stand do not decide; and it may be asked, with no great appearance of subtlety, whether the name, if it be what Selden says, belongs to the companies at all, or to one of them. NB-25-010 NB-26-036

×Of the parentage, the testimonies are not fewer, and are not more consistent. Strabo reports of the Corybantes, in the place already cited, that some called them sons of Saturn, and that others said they were sons of Jupiter and Calliope, and were the same with the Cabeiri, who withdrew, it is added, to Samothrace, where their rites were of a mystical kind (Strab. lib. x.).⁵ Of the two parentages it is the second only which Strabo joins to the Cabeiri; the first, which has the Corybantes for sons of Saturn, is reported without any such conjunction. Mr. Faber, who reads the relation of Sanchoniatho as making the Titans seven in number and the children of Saturn, a number which, with their parent at their head, he finds to be exactly that of the persons preserved in the Ark, argues from this, and from the Cabeiri being of another stock, to the identity of the two (Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. iii.).⁶ But an argument from parentage has force only where the parentage is agreed; and in the single place which has just been cited it is given twice, and given differently. Which of the two the Cabeiri are to be assigned to, if to either, the testimonies at present collected do not determine; and it is not apparent upon what principle a difference of father should be taken as evidence of sameness. NB-25-017

○There remains the testimony of Philo Byblius, who, as cited by Eusebius (Euseb. Praep. Evang. i. 10), sets Suduc beside Misor, whose names he interprets the Just and the Straight, and gives to the two together the discovery of the use of salt; of Misor, whom I take to be Mizraim, as will be shown under the heads of the first Book, he makes Taautus the son; and from Suduc he derives the Dioscuri, or Cabeiri, or Corybantes, or Samothraces, to whom he attributes the first invention of a ship.⁷ In another place, which is cited by the same authority, he relates that the things of Saturn and of Egypt were recorded first by Suduc's seven sons the Cabeiri, and by their eighth brother Asclepius, at the command of the god Tauthus.⁸ It is to be observed that Philo, in the genealogy which he reports, has no Noah. If his Suduc stand in the same age as Misor, he cannot be the father of Ham; and if he be the patriarch, the genealogy which places him beside Misor is not that of the sacred text. Which of these is the case I do not see that the passage determines; and the question of the Cabeiri, so far from being advanced by it, is increased by a second inquiry, whether they are the sons of one man or a company which bore a name. NB-26-013 NB-55-001

○Upon this testimony two of the moderns have raised, each upon his own foundation, a conclusion which it does not appear to sustain. Mr. Bryant, who takes the original Cabiritic deity to have been the patriarch, "who was of so great repute for his piety, and justice," affirms that "the other Cabiri, his immediate offspring, are said to have been the sons of Sadyc; by which is signified the just man" (Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Of the Cabiri, Corybantes, Idaei Dactyli, Curetes).⁹ Mr. Faber, upon the other hand, finds in Noah and the persons preserved with him "the original Cabiri, or great Gods of the Pagans" (Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. ii.).¹⁰ By the one the Cabeiri are the children of the patriarch; by the other they are the patriarch, with his sons or with the seven who were saved along with him; and it is a circumstance not unworthy of remark that both writers appeal to a testimony in which, as I have observed, the patriarch is not named, and which numbers the Cabeiri, in the passage last cited, at seven, with an eighth who is not called a Cabeirus. That the just man of Philo is Noah is a supposition common to both; and it is the supposition, not the testimony, which has produced their agreement upon the point and their disagreement upon every other. NB-26-013 NB-55-001

×It is time to state, as at present sketched, the view which I incline to take of the name and the parentage; and I do so with the less reluctance because it consists chiefly in a refusal. I am not able to affirm that the name is a sound, with Strabo, or a title, with Selden; nor that the parentage is from Saturn, or from Jupiter and Calliope, or from the just man; and I make use of no derivation until the persons themselves are ascertained. It is, indeed, not without some appearance of reason that the invention of a ship, which Philo attributes to the descendants of Suduc, has been thought to place them among the deified patriarchs, and near the Deluge; and were this established, the Cabeiri would belong, as a head of the present Book, to the deifying of the patriarchs. But the same Strabo who reports their parentage reports also that they have been taken for ministers of the Phrygian rites; and a head which is to be fixed by one witness and unfixed by another is not yet a head. I reserve, therefore, to the next head, which treats of the number, the proof of every part of this view that admits of proof; for the number is to be ascertained first.¹¹ NB-26-013 NB-25-017 NB-25-010

○It may be objected, in the first place, that a refusal of this kind is not an inquiry but its discontinuance; to which I answer that an inquiry is not advanced by a conclusion which the testimonies will not bear, and that the want of agreement in the writers who have attempted to determine the name and the parentage is the strongest evidence that it has not been determined. It may be objected, in the second place, that the testimony of Philo is late, and that Strabo, who is earlier, is silent on the patriarch; to which I answer that the silence of an author concerning a person whom he had no occasion to name is not evidence against him, and that the lateness of a testimony does not diminish its value as evidence that a tradition was remembered. It may be objected, in the third place, that Mr. Faber's identification of the companies would dispose at once of all the difficulties of the parentage; to which I answer that it would dispose of them by removing the distinctions on which the difficulties rest, and that an explanation which accounts equally for every instance is not on that account the more to be received. And it may be objected, lastly, that the Cabeiri of the Phrygian rites and the Cabeiri of Philo, being known by one name, must be one company; to which I can only reply that a name applied to persons is not the same thing as the persons identified, and that whether they were the same company, or the same as the Curetes and the Corybantes, is a question which depends upon their number. The Cabeiri stand, therefore, at the close of the present head as they stood at its beginning: their number is not ascertained, their identity with the Curetes and the Corybantes is neither affirmed nor denied, and the head under which they are to be placed remains undetermined. These objections, and others which may be urged with less force, will be considered at greater length under the next head.¹² NB-25-010 NB-25-017 NB-26-013 NB-26-036 NB-55-001