How much, and with what immense justification, the Greek religious spirit was a spirit of beauty transforming Barbarism, could hardly be more aptly illustrated than by a story in Herodotus. It is the tale of Atys the son of Croesus. How beautiful it is, every reader will confess. But how instructive it is, hardly any but the special student will recognize. For he finds in it the unmistakable features of an ancient myth. Atys, the brilliant, early-dying prince whom Herodotus, repeating the legend as he heard it, calls the son of the historical Croesus, is no other than Attis, brother and son and spouse—the ambiguity is in the myth—of the Mountain Mother of Phrygia. Atys, slain in hunting the boar, is Attis, who was a hunter, and scarcely distinguishable from Adonis. The matter is explained at length by Sir James Frazer in his Attis, Adonis and Osiris. The myth arose out of the worship of the Asiatic goddess variously named by the Greeks Kybelê, Kybêbê, Rhea, and other titles, though in reality a nameless deity, a holy Mother and Bride wedded at the right season of the year to her son, Attis, that its fruits might be renewed through the magic of that ritual. There was a temple of “Kybelê” near Sardis—still stand a column or two—where the Paktôlos rushes from its mountain gorge. That helps to explain why a prince of Sardis has entered into her myth. It is even possible that actual princes of Sardis, did anciently personate once a year the consort of the great goddess of the region. This at least accords with analogy, and best explains the origin of the story in Herodotus. For the rest it is a Phrygian tale. Olympus, where the fabled boar is hunted, was in Mysia, which was in Phrygia. Adrastos, “He from whom there is no Escape,” is certainly connected with the goddess Adrasteia, much worshipped in the Phrygian Troad. Above all it was in Phrygia that the Mountain Mother was chiefly worshipped. In spring the Phrygians fashioned an image of the young Attis, and mourned over it with ritual dirges, recalling his doom. Thus gradually we may dig down to the roots of the myth.
What we find there is a thing of horror. Nana, daughter of the River Sangarios, saw an almond-tree, which had sprung from the blood of a son of Kybelê, whom the gods in fear of his strength had mutilated. (Here is the Hesiodic motif again.) She conceived and bare a child, which she exposed. At first the wild goats nurtured him; then shepherds of the mountain. At last Attis was grown so beautiful that Agdistis (who is but a form of Kybelê) loved him, and when he would not answer her love, drove him mad, so that he fled to the hills and there under a pine-tree unmanned himself. From his blood sprang violets to hang about the tree.
But for the unexpected sweetness of wild violet and mountain pine at the close, the story is curiously unlovely. But what really gives one a shudder is the reflection that the story mirrors a fact. The priests of Kybelê ... what I would say is that they behaved like Attis.
You would guess none of these things from Herodotus. What has happened to the myth that it is transmuted to the exquisite and piteous tale he has related? We can only say that it has suffered the Greek magic. The Hellenic spirit, dreaming on the old dark fantasy, robs it a little of its wild, outrageous beauty (which was to reappear later in the Attis of Catullus), but keeps much of its natural magic, and by introducing the figure of the father adds overwhelmingly to the dramatic value of the story. Most of all it steeps the whole in a wonderful rightness of emotion. The gift which has achieved this is, as I have hinted, a dramatic gift; the magic is the same as that which pervades the Attic Tragedy. So much is this the case that the Tale of Atys in Herodotus reads like a Greek tragic drama in prose. The explanation is that ancient Tragedy arose out of just such a ritual as that from which sprang the Atys story. That story, so far as I know, was never made the subject of an actual drama. It seems a pity. What a subject it would have been for Euripides!
It seems to me a legitimate procedure, in an essay of this kind, to indicate the affinity between the tale in Herodotus and the normal structure and method of Attic Tragedy by treating the narrative portions of the tale as so many stage-directions, and the dialogue as we treat the dialogue in a play, assigning every speech to its proper speaker. Let me only add that all the dialogue, and practically all of the stage-directions, are literally translated.
THE DEATH OF ATYS
[The scene is Sardis in Lydia. It is a populous settlement of reed-thatched houses clustering about a wonderful, sheer, enormous rock crowned by the great walls of the Citadel. Over against it, to the south, rises the neighbouring range of Tmôlos, whence issues the famous little stream of the Paktôlos, which, emerging from a gorge, rolls its gold-grained sand actually through the market-place of Sardis into the Hermos. Some miles away, by the margin of a lake, appear the vast grave-mounds of the Lydian kings. Within the Citadel is the ancestral Palace of Croesus. Any one entering the palace would observe its unwonted splendour—silver and gold and electrum everywhere. He would also be struck by the circumstance that the walls of the great Hall are bare of the swords and spears and quivers, which it was customary to hang there. At present the weapons are piled in the women’s chambers.
Croesus is seen clad in a great purple-red mantle, and carrying a long golden sceptre tipped with a little eagle in gold. He is surrounded by his bodyguard of spearmen, who wear greaves and breastplates of bronze, and helmets crested with the tails of horses.
A Stranger in the peaked cap, embroidered dress, and tall boots of a Phrygian noble enters with drawn sword, and with looks of haste and horror. Seeing Croesus, he utters no word, but, running forward, sits down by the central hearth of the house, strikes his sword into the floor, and covers his face. By this proceeding he confesses at once that he is a homicide, and that he desires absolution from his sin. In silence also the King approaches and gazes on the man. Then he goes through the elaborate and displeasing ritual of purification from bloodshed, calling aloud on the God of Suppliants to sanctify the rite. At last he is free to question the Stranger.]
Croesus. Man sitting at my hearth, who art thou and whence comest thou out of Phrygia? What man or what woman hast thou slain?