[754] Servius, "they call her"; Macrobius, "Aristophanes calls her." But who this Aristophanes is, or where he so calls her, we are not informed.
[755] So Jastrow, in the article cited above. Remarking on the statement of Lydus (in De Mensibus, ii, 10) that the Pamphylians formerly worshiped a bearded Venus, he calls attention to the Carian priestess of Athene (Herodotus, i, 175; viii, 104), who, when misfortune was impending, had (or grew) a great beard—a mark of power, but presumably not a genuine growth. Exactly what this story means it is hard to say.
[756] Pausanias, vii, 17; Amobius, v, 5.
[757] Roscher, Lexikon, articles "Agdistis," "Attis"; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p.219 f.; H. Hepding, Attis; cf. Pseudo-Lucian, De Syria Dea, 15 (Attis assumes female form and dress).
[758] This practice seems to be an exaggerated form of the savage custom of self-wounding in honor of the dead (to obtain their favor), interpreted in developed cults as a sacrifice to the deity or as a means of union with him.
[759] On the wide diffusion of cults of mother-goddesses see below, §§ 729, 734, 762, etc.
[760] Cf. Pseudo-Lucian, De Syria Dea 15; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alteriums, 2d ed., i, 649, 651; Lagrange, Études sur les religions sémitiques, 2d ed., p. 241; Hepding, Attis, p. 162.
[761] See above, § 411.
[762] In Theophrastus, Characters, article 16 (Roscher, Lexikon, 8. v. Hermaphroditos).
[763] Roscher, article cited.