There's More Than One Way to Make a Eunuch: A Brief Overview of the Evolution of the Cult of Cybele

εἰσὶν γὰρ εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς ἐγεννήθησαν οὕτως,
   For there are eunuchs who from their mother's womb were born thus,
καὶ εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνουχίσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων,
    And there are eunuchs who were gelded by men,
καὶ εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνούχισαν ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.
    And there are eunuchs who gelded themselves for the Kingdom of Heaven.
ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν χωρείτω.
    He who is able to receive it, let him receive it.
                                              -ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ - The Gospel of Matthew 19.12

The Mother of the Anatolian Mountains

For many thousands of years, the dark forests and shadowy mountains groves of ancient Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) were occasionally filled with the orgiastic sounds of banging drums, clanging cymbals, and deep-throated flutes. From the mountain glens arose a mother goddess, a full-breasted lady of fertility, harvest, and the sun.

Seated Mother Goddess flanked by two lionesses from Çatalhöyük (southern Turkey), now housed at Ankara

Her wild adherents called this fierce protectress and life-giver, Matar Kubileya (I will Anglicize her name as Cybele throughout), which perhaps means "Mother of the Mountains", making her a nature goddess of the wilderness. She is typically depicted with twin lions, sometimes flanking her (as in the figure above) or drawing her chariot. As to her original and proper roles and functions, we are left to a bit of our own guesswork due to the small amount of surviving (or even firsthand written) records from ancient Anatolia; however, certain features or iconographic traits of the goddess can be identified with some level of certainly by examining the reactions of the neighboring Greeks and Romans, two peoples who are remarkable in their zeal to attempt any sort of bookkeeping. 

The Consort Attis

Cybele (left and flanked by a lion) holds a drum and gazes on Attis (middle) who wears the Phrygian cap.

From such records, it can be deduced that from ancient times, Kubileya had a consort named Attis, a young man marked by his uncommon and tragic beauty. In Attis, the worshipers of the Mother saw her partner and helper as god of vegetation and rebirth, an immortal who suffers death at the onset of each winter and returns born anew in the spring (cf. Christ; Dionysos Zagreus; Osiris). His beauty seems to derive from his androgyny, for from the earliest indications of his existence he was a self-castrated youth, a young man who had cast aside his amatory desires because of an infidelity to his Lady, and therefore proved to her a stronger fidelity to never repeat the sin. 
The priests of the Cybele, sometimes known as Atti (often Galli), were self-castrated eunuchs, men who had likewise proven their faith by casting aside their manhood.
The God of Abraham asks His followers to display their faithfulness by cutting off their foreskin, and Abraham himself was asked to slay one of his young sons; Cybele asked for her worshipers to "dash away the weight of [their] sex" (Catullus LIII.5), and cut themselves off from having any potential offspring.

Statue of Attis in the Shrine of Attis at Ostia, the ancient Roman harbor at the mouth of the Tiber. The statue reclines (like a river deity - indeed, the Gallos River [Galli?] where Attis died is depicted as the head upon which Attis is resting), holds pomegranates in one hand, and wears the usual Phrygian cap, but crowned with the rays of the sun.

East and African Origins of Attis

The ancient Egyptian Osiris himself had been sliced into bits by his wicked brother Seth, only to be born anew when all the pieces were found and gathered by his loyal wife Isis; however, a golden-crafted phallus had to stand in for the original, which had been devoured by a crab. Once revived, Osiris impregnated Isis before he again died (his resurrection was not permanent), and she in turn gave birth to Horus, the god of beginnings, and the conquerer of the evil Set.

Left to Right: Horus, the falcon-headed god of new beginning; and offspring of Osiris (center), god of the afterlife and resurrection; and husband of Isis (right), the mother, birth-giver, the Throne.

In a variant of the myth, Seth imprisoned Osiris in a coffin and set it down the Nile. The box floated through the delta and washed ashore in Byblus, Syria, where a tree grew around it and was worshipped by the populace. It has been theorized that:

"The Syrian episode in the legend suggests that Osiris was closely connected with Adonis of Byblus, the earlier Tammuz or Dumuzi of Sumer and the later Dionysus of Greece. All of these gods were vegetation gods and culture heroes who perished in their prime. The cycle of their lives corresponds to the cycle of Osiris."

                                -J.E. Manchip White, Ancient Egypt: Its Culture and History, pg. 30 

The Invading West

The Greeks had an early presence in Anatolia, having begun raids and colonizing efforts along the coastline, launching attacks from their roving ships (especially upon the Troad: cf. The Iliad) since at least the 12th century B.C. Once these invaders had established themselves amongst the neighboring peoples, they came into contact with their customs, language, and religions; and then both they absorbed these cultures to some degree, and in return, to some degree, were themselves absorbed. Most eloquently did Horace capture (pun intended) the sentiment when reflecting on the Roman addition of Greece as a province to the Empire: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.- "Captured Greece her fierce conqueror she in turned captured, and arts she bore to rustic Latium" (Epistulae II.I.156-157). Accordingly, these invaders adopted and used some variants of the goddess' name, each one descending from Kubileya: Κυβέλη - "Kubele"; Κυβήβη - "Kubebe"; and Κύβελις - "Kubelis". Additionally, they identified her with their own Rheia, the Titaness mother of Zeus and the Romans with Ops, who is wealth, resource, and, thence by those means, power. Additionally, the Roman Catullus uses both names "Cybele" and "Cybebe" nearly interchangeably in the poem below (though he only uses "Cybebe" as a direct address).  
The identifying characteristic of Cybele is then, the power she wields as a mother, the matriarch and birth-giver, the theotokos ("God-birther"). Ovid, besides using adjectival variants of her name "Cybeleia" "Cybeleian", calls her "Mater" "Mother".
The Greeks continued to Eastward move and found, further inland at a mountain near Pessinos, a sect of the Mother's cult revering a similar deity in the form of an unshaped black meteorite, a mystical stone which had fallen from the heavens; these Pessinians called her Agdistis, after the mountain. The Greeks just called it "Κυβέλη".

Greece's Religious Syncretism

As the Greeks moved likewise Westward, they carried the habits of Asia Minor with their ships and armies until they reached all the way to the expanding Roman Empire by the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. So when another wild, orgiastic cult moved from the East into the further West, these migrating rites and adherents were easily conflated with the worship of Dionysos and his Mainads, with whom Cybele and her Galli share many traits. It is from this connection, the Greeks (and to perhaps a greater extent, the Romans) conjoined Dionysos' traces of madness with hers, so that in Pausanias' Grecian account of her birth and origin, insanity is a foreground feature:

"The local [Phrygian] legend about him [Attis] being this. Zeus [or rather the Phrygian sky-god], it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground, which in course of time sent up a Daimon, with two sexual organs, male and female. They call the daimon Agdistis [Kybele, Cybele]. But the gods, fearing Agdistis, cut off the male organ. There grew up from it an almond-tree with its fruit ripe, and a daughter of the river Saggarios, they say, took the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child. A boy was born, and exposed, but wastended by a he-goat. As he grew up his beauty was more than human, and Agdistis fell in love with him. When he had grown up, Attis was sent by his relatives to Pessinos, that he might wed the king's daughter. The marriage-song was being sung, when Agdistis appeared, and Attis went mad and cut off his genitals, as also did he who was giving him his daughter in marriage. But Agdistis repented of what she had done to Attis, and persuaded Zeus to grant the body of Attis should neither rot at all nor decay. These are the most popular forms of the legend of Attis."

                                                                          -Pausanias, Hellados Periegesis VII.17.8

In a differing account, it is Dionysos (jealous perhaps?) who drugs Agdistis with a sleep draught and then ties the being's foot to his/her male genitals. When s/he awoke, the penis was ripped off when s/he jerked his/her foot away. Yeesh. 

Agdistis. It is apt that that particular bit broke off.

Further Grecian syncretism can be found in Nonnus' Dionysiaca, an epic poem of the 5th century A.D. concerning the adventures of Dionysos:

"[The jealous goddess Hera would have destroyed the infant Dionysos who was then nursed by Ino:] She [Hera] would have destroyed the son of Zeus [Dionysos]; but Hermes caught him up, and carried him to the wooded ridge where Kybele (Cybele) dwelt. Moving fast, Hera ran swift-shoe on quick feet from high heaven; but he was before her, and assumed the eternal shape of first-born Phanes [one of the first born gods]. Hera in respect for the most ancient of the gods, gave him place and bowed before the radiance of the deceiving face, not knowing the borrowed shape for a fraud. So Hermes passed over the mountain tract with quicker step than hers, carrying the horned child folded in his arms, and gave it to Rheia [i.e. Kybele, Cybele], nurse of lions, mother of Father Zeus, and said these few words to the goddess mother of the greatest: ‘Receive, goddess, a new son of your Zeus! He is to fight with the Indians, and when he has done with earth he will come into the starry sky, to the great joy of resentful Hera! Indeed it is not proper that Ino should be nurse to one whom Zeus brought forth. Let the mother of Zeus be nanny to Dionysos--mother of Zeus and nurse of her grandson!’
This said he put off the higher shape of selfborn Phanes and put on his own form again, leaving Bakkhos (Bacchus) to grow a second time in the Meter's (Mother's) nurture.
The goddess took care of him; and while he was yet a boy, she set him to drive a car drawn by ravening lions. Within that godwelcoming courtyard, the tripping Korybantes (Corybantes) would surround Dionysos with their childcherishing dance, and clash their swords, and strike their shields with rebounding steel in alternate movements, to conceal the growing boyhood of Dionysos; and as the boy listened to the fostering noise of the shields he grew up under the care of the Korybantes like his father.
At nine years old the youngster went a-hunting his game to the kill . . . he would hold lightly aloft stretched on his shoulders a bold fellstriped tiger unshackled, and brought in hand to show Rheia the cubs he had torn newborn from the dam's milky teats. He dragged horrible lions all alive, and clutching a couple of feet in each hand presented them to the Mother that she might yoke them to her car. Rheia looked on laughing with joy, and admired the manliness and doughty feats of young Dionysos; his father Kronion [Zeus] laughed when he saw with delighted eyes Iobakkhos driving the grim lions . . .
Often he stood in the chariot of immortal Rheia, and held the flowing reins in his tenderskin hand, and checked the nimble team of galloping lions . . . Thus he grew up beside cliffloving Rheia, yet a boy in healthy youth, mountainbred."

                                                                                             -Nonnus, Dionysiaca IX.136

Antinous as Dionysos-Osiris, c.A.D. 130; Vatican Museum. (also shows further link between Dionysos, Osiris)

Here the infant Dionysos is given over to Rheia, mother of Zeus, who most importantly is referred to as Κυβηλίς "Cybelis", and further called λεοντοβότῳ, "nurse of lions", and lady of the "Korybantes", the drummers of Cybele; these played their loud music to drown out the infant Zeus' cries, lest he alert his wicked father, the Titan crooked-minded Kronos, who had already devoured his brothers and sisters. The two deities, Cybele and Dionysos, have been permanently meshed in the Western mind, a tradition which owes much to Catullus. 
Further intertwining of these Eastern tales can be found in the stories the Grecian Ἄδωνις (Adonis), for (as already mentioned), Attis is an Anatolian counterpart of this beautiful youth who likewise tragically died young; however, Adonis was slain because of his boyish hubris in a hunting accident. The Adonis story is almost certainly borrowed from the Sumerian Tammuz, and the name Adonis, meaning "lord", is itself rooted in the Semitic East, and relates to both Canaanite and biblical Hebrew ("אֲדֹנָי‎ - Adonai; lit. My Lords, Your Majesties" is a title reserved for God Himself in the Hebrew Scriptures). In Grecian trappings, the youth was paired with Aphrodite, and he her youthful consort. Overcome by his preternatural loveliness, it is she who is doomed to hold him dying in her arms and mourn his failing beauty.  
After the Greeks handed the story over to the Romans, it is the Augustan poet Ovid who (as usual) tells the story best in his Metamorphoses, where the Adonis myth has been quite decidedly wrapped up in tale of the cult of Cybele and Attis: the hunter Adonis, after being born of his mother who had been transformed into a myrrh tree (cf. Osiris' coffin, which washed ashore to Syria and became intertwined in a tree), is pursued amorously by Venus and dies of a groin-wound given to him while hunting a boar (furthering echoing the castration aspect of the Attis myth).
In the following selection, Adonis dies of his wound after Venus tells him of how she revenged herself upon Hippomenes, the hero who did not offer her thanks after successfully winning the hand of Atalanta:

templa, deum Matri quae quondam clarus Echion

                  "It was by the shrine for the Gods-Mother --long ago -- the temple which famed Echion

fecerat ex voto, nemorosis abdita silvis,

                 Had constructed as a promise, hidden away in the grove-filled woods.

transibant, et iter longum requiescere suasit;

                 There they [Hippomenes and Atalanta] made their way, and their long journey convinced them to rest.

illic concubitus intempestiva cupido

                 Thither stirred at a time most in-opportune was lust,

occupat Hippomenen a numine concita nostro.               690

                It seized upon Hippomenes, by mine own power was it aroused.

luminis exigui fuerat prope templa recessus,

                From time long a'fore, glowing in meager light, had there near the shrine been a hollow,

speluncae similis, nativo pumice tectus,

                Alike to a cave, was with old nature's volcanic stone inter-woven,

religione sacer prisca, quo multa sacerdos

                With old rites made holy, where many wooden figures the priests

lignea contulerat veterum simulacra deorum;

                Had gathered together there, likenesses of the old gods.

hunc init et vetito temerat sacraria probro.               695

                Hither he came and with forbidden shame pollutes the holy relics.

sacra retorserunt oculos, turritaque Mater

                The images divine turn away their eyes, the Tower-Crowned Mother,

an Stygia sontes dubitavit mergeret unda:

                Whether or not to drive the guilty pair 'neath the Stygian waves hesitates.

poena levis visa est; ergo modo levia fulvae

                This penalty is light-seeming: and so their up-till-now slight necks

colla iubae velant, digiti curvantur in ungues,

                Do tawny manes now hide; fingers are bent into claws;

ex umeris armi fiunt, in pectora totum               700

                 From shoulders are forearms bent; into their chests entirely

pondus abit, summae cauda verruntur harenae;

                 Withdraws their weight; the top of the sand their tails sweep aside;

iram vultus habet, pro verbis murmura reddunt,

                 Wrath does their countenance wear; instead of words they resort to roaring;

pro thalamis celebrant silvas aliisque timendi

                 Instead of marriage-beds, they lie in the forests; and, fearful to all besides,

dente premunt domito Cybeleia frena leones.

                With tamed tooth nip they at Cybele's bit, both now become lions.

hos tu, care mihi, cumque his genus omne ferarum,               705

                These -- O thou, my love, O dear to me! -- all that race of beasts,

quod non terga fugae, sed pugnae pectora praebet,

                Those beasts who not their backs in flight, but their breasts to combat offer,

effuge, ne virtus tua sit damnosa duobus!"

                Flee from them! Lest thy courage be accursed to us both!"

     'Illa quidem monuit iunctisque per aera cycnis

               And so warn did she, and with her yoked swans through the air

carpit iter, sed stat monitis contraria virtus.

               She makes her way; but standeth 'gainst her warnings contrary is his courage.

forte suem latebris vestigia certa secuti               710

               By chance a boar -- from his lairs have the dogs followed his sure-made footfalls --

excivere canes, silvisque exire parantem

               And roused him up! While from the woods it prepares to rush out

fixerat obliquo iuvenis Cinyreius ictu:

               Did the youthful grandson of Cinyra catch it with a glancing blow.

protinus excussit pando venabula rostro

              Forthwith the boar struck loose the hunting-spear with its crooked snout,

sanguine tincta suo trepidumque et tuta petentem

              The spear with its own blood splattered! And the youth trembling and safety-seeking

trux aper insequitur totosque sub inguine dentes               715

              This fierce boar chases after and its entire tusks under his sex

abdidit et fulva moribundum stravit harena.

              It buries, and upon the yellow sand the dying boy it does lay flat.

vecta levi curru medias Cytherea per auras

              Conveyed by her light chariot through the middle air, Cytherea

Cypron olorinis nondum pervenerat alis:

             Not yet had Cypron reached on swans' wings,

agnovit longe gemitum morientis et albas

            When she recognized from far off the groan of the dying boy, white

flexit aves illuc, utque aethere vidit ab alto               720

             Birds she bent thither. And when from the high upper air she saw

exanimem inque suo iactantem sanguine corpus,

             Him breathless, his body in his own blood lying, 

desiluit pariterque sinum pariterque capillos

             She jumped down. Now her clothes and now her hair

rupit et indignis percussit pectora palmis

             Rent she, and with undeserving hands she struck her breast,

questaque cum fatis "at non tamen omnia vestri

             And made these 'plaints with the Fates: "Ah, but not yet shall all 

iuris erunt" dixit. "luctus monimenta manebunt               725

             Be under your purview, " spake she. "Monuments of my mourning shall last

semper, Adoni, mei, repetitaque mortis imago

             Forever, O Adonis, and reenacted be the image of thy death,

annua plangoris peraget simulamina nostri;

             Yearly shall it finish off the remembrances of my grief.

at cruor in florem mutabitur. an tibi quondam

             But thy blood into a flower shall be changed. Did not once for thee,

femineos artus in olentes vertere mentas,

             O, Persephone, a woman's limbs into fragrant mint be changed?

Persephone, licuit: nobis Cinyreius heros               730

             For thee Persephone, was this not allowed? For me, shall the hero of Cinyra

invidiae mutatus erit?" sic fata cruorem

             Begrudged be his change?" Thus she spoke, and the blood

nectare odorato sparsit, qui tinctus ab illo

             With fragrant nectar she sprinkled, which when mingled by it,

intumuit sic, ut fulvo perlucida caeno

              Swelleth up together, as from the yellow mire are wont

surgere bulla solet, nec plena longior hora

              Translucent bubbles to rise. No longer than an hour

facta mora est, cum flos de sanguine concolor ortus,               735

              Has the delay lasted, when the flower of like hue from the blood has arisen.

qualem, quae lento celant sub cortice granum,

              Of such a kind which hide under a bent rind their seeds,

punica ferre solent; brevis est tamen usus in illo;

             Such as pomegranates are wont to do. Brief, however, is this enjoyment in them:

namque male haerentem et nimia levitate caducum

             For poorly does it cling, and with far too much lightness is it prone to fall,

excutiunt idem, qui praestant nomina, venti.'

             Do likewise the winds knock it down, the winds who have bestowed its name.

                                                         -Ovid, Metamorphoses X. 686-739, trans. is my own.

The worship of Adonis was a yearly reenactment of the death and rebirth of a vegetarian deity, who was mourned and loved by the Goddess of Love and Beauty. It is convenient enough for the purposes of this research that Ovid pairs a Cybele story in his account of Venus and Adonis, and shows how closely all of these myths were intertwined in the Roman mind by at least the end of the 1st century B.C.

The Awakening of Adonis, John William Waterhouse

So, how did the worship of an Eastern maternity goddess reach the ears and pens of the late Republic and early Principate poets of the Roman Empire? 
Hannibal is to thank for this.

The Roman Magna Mater and the Bacchanalian Affair

Hannibal Barca, son of the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, crossed the Alps with his army and entered Italy later than he had planned: it was now winter of 218 B.C. and far colder than he wished. Despite the odds, Hannibal was determined to successfully carry out his campaign of destruction and subjugation: he meant to bring the mighty and belligerent Romans to heel. The grandfathers and fathers of these pragmatic Italian warriors had humiliated not merely the North African mercantile capital city of Carthage just a few decades earlier in the First Punic War: they had embarrassed Hannibal's family and the matter was now personal. For sixteen years, Hannibal terrorized Italy, an armed enemy at large within the Empire, unable to be overcome. There were minor skirmishes and three great battles which were fought against the Carthaginian at the River Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and most calamitously at Cannae; Romans were slaughtered and sold into slavery; ally Italians slain; Senators fallen; Consuls killed. 

Hannibal, the Romans' Usama bin Laden

In 204 B.C., in one of their darkest hours, the Romans believed that the end was nigh: stars had fallen in a meteor shower and crops had failed; famine had descended on the city. The frantic magistrates turned to the Sibyline Books and decided that the prophetic verses there written spoke of salvation in bringing the Mother to be kept at Rome. The Senate identified the Mother with Cybele, whom they called Magna Mater "Great Mother". It was voted that the cult black stone at Pessinos in Asia Minor would be brought via ship to the Italian harbor at Ostia. Hence, the stone (and thereby, the Mother herself) would be received by Rome's most noble citizen, P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, and brought to the Temple of Victoria until her temple was finished being built on the Palatine Hill (an indication of the speed with which they were acting - the temple wasn't even built when the stone arrived). The stone was set into the face of the statue of the goddess and was seen as late as the tine of the Christian poet Prudentius (fl. late 4th century A.D.) who remarked on its odd appearance.
The famine ended, and not two years later the Romans managed to draw Hannibal out of Italy by threatening Carthage directly. The deadly Carthaginian general was defeated at Zama in 202 B.C. by a member of Nasica's own family: P. Cornelius Scipio, who was later honored with the title, Africanus - "Conquerer of Africa" as one of his many rewards of conquest.
Haste is an important component of madness, one of the qualities identified with the Mother; it is fitting, therefore, that the Romans of the time were perhaps too hasty in bringing the cult to Rome. Though attempts were made by many Roman writers to connect Cybele to the worship of their Trojan ancestors who ruled the northern Anatolian Troad, the Romans were an intrinsically conservative and some-what xenophobic people, and a wild, foreign cult had just entered the very neighborhood of the old aristocracy. Though Hellenophilia was in vogue at this time, Scipio Africanus himself had received his fair share of grief for his attention to Greek literature and art, as Cato and his ilk of the Roman old Houses railed that the outside was to be distrusted and was inferior to the old Roman ways.
Furthermore, in a few decades, the Republic would be wrapped up in the (so-called) scandalous Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C. (cf. Livy XXXIX.9), in which legislation was passed by the Senate to hand over the power of conducting worship by the private cult leaders of the sects of Liber-Bacchus (the Roman Dionysos) to the purview of the state pontifices. Livy's dramatic (in some places, certainly overly so...) account paints the watchdogs of the commonweal's safety as unaware to the dangers of the doings of these secret and insane acolytes of a dangerous foreign cult from the East. Once warned, the magistrates, exerting swift Roman efficiency and Italian pragmatism, then saved the day in glorious fashion by arresting several thousand persons and executing many (ah, Romans). 
Given how many ties existed between the worship of Dionysos-Liber-Bacchus and the worship of Cybele, one would guess that her followers would easily have become wrapped up in whole Bacchanalian scandal. However, Cybele was not to suffer the same restraints, most likely owing to the fact that the one particularly damning feature of the Bacchanalian scandal did not apply to her: Cybele's priesthood did not admit women or children, whereas the horror and the actual scandal of the affair Livy describes is that it is centered around the corruption of Roman wives and youth. It is not difficult to imagine a similar reaction in our contemporary society. Imagine today's politicians on the record railing against the evils of a secretly spreading foreign religion from the East which is corrupting Roman young men with their violent ways and driving good Roman matrons into madness. Cybele, for the most part, escaped such a dangerous labeling.
That does not imply, however, that there was not some thinly-veiled hint of disgust at certain aspects of the Mother's worship; traditionalists of the West, Greek and Roman alike, have certainly echoed similar disdainful responses to seeing self-castrated men parading about in their womanish trappings while dancing in their orgiastic and cacaphonous revelries. Mark the similarities between the following passage (written by a Greek) and Catullus LXIII:

Goaded by the fury of the dreadful goddess, tossing his locks in wild frenzy, clothed in woman's raiment with well-plaited tresses and a dainty netted hair-caul, a eunuch once took shelter in a mountain cavern, driven by the numbing snow of Zeus. But behind him rushed in unshivering a lion, slayer of bulls, returning to his den in the evening, who looking on the man, snuffing in his shapely nostrils the smell of human flesh, stood still on his sturdy feet, but rolling his eyes roared loudly from his greedy jaws. The cave, his den, thunders around him and the wooded peak that mounts nigh to the clouds echoes loud. But the priest startled by the deep voice felt all his stirred spirit broken in his breast. Yet he uttered from his lips the piercing shriek they use, and tossed his whirling locks, and holding up his great tambour, the revolving instrument of Olympian Rhea, he beat it, and it was the saviour of his life; for the lion hearing the unaccustomed hollow boom of the bull's hide was afraid and took to flight. See how all-wise necessity taught a means of escape from death!

                                                                                    -Antipater, Greek Anthology VI.219

While allowing the castrated Galli their place in worship, the Roman Senate banned citizens from becoming eunuchs until the reign of the emperor Claudius (A.D. 41 - 54); the emperor Domitian (r. A.D. 81 - 96) would replace the ban. However, Cybele's worship wasn't as repressed as Liber-Bacchus' was, given the number of state-sponsored festivals devoted to her (March was her holy month, and several days were given to celebration of her, especially on the twenty-fourth, the Dies Sanguinis - "The Day of Blood", when new Galli were made) well into the Roman Imperial Principate.