No. OLSON2017-001
Kotyto's rhymbos, the whip of frenzy
Greece · Athens, Attica; cult of the Thracian goddess Kotyto (Edonians) · Europe · Mediterranean
Sacred / spirit
rhymbos (ῥύμβος)
Source term: ῥύμβος / ῥόμβος; 'bull-roarer' (Olson)
rhymbos (ῥύμβος): the Attic form of rhombos, the whirled roarer of the mysteries. Baptai: 'Dippers', title of Eupolis' play, perhaps for the celebrants' rite of immersion or their dyed clothes; the sense is disputed. Kotyto (Kotys): a Thracian goddess with orgiastic rites, worshipped also in Athens and Corinth.
"O bull-roarer that whipped me!" a voice cries in Eupolis' comedy Baptai, staged in Athens around 415 BC, and the roarer's lash is the frenzy of Kotyto, a Thracian goddess whose men-devotees the play mocked in women's dress; Alcibiades was said to have taken it personally. Her rites were older and louder than the joke. In Aeschylus' lost Edonians, the Thracians who carry out "the rites of sacred Kotyto" play the lathe-turned pipes and clash bronze cymbals, while from somewhere out of sight come frightening imitations of bulls bellowing, and a drum rolls like thunder underground. Centuries later Juvenal still remembered the Baptae, wearing out Athenian Kotyto with secret orgies by torchlight.
ὦ ῥύμβε μαστίξας ἐμέ
O bull-roarer that whips me!
Eupolis, Baptai fr. 83 K.-A., trans. S. Douglas Olson, Fragmenta Comica 8.1 (2017), p. 259.
Particulars
- Object
- A rhymbos, the Attic name for the corded wooden roarer of the mystery cults.
- Function
- Sounded in the orgiastic rites of the goddess Kotyto, where it was said to whip the celebrant into frenzy; in Aeschylus' Edonians her rites include bull-voiced roars from out of sight beside pipes, cymbals and drum.