The myths relating to the Curetes abound with different statements and confusion. The following are the only points to be borne in mind. The Curetes belong to the most ancient times of Greece, and probably are to be counted among the first inhabitants of Phrygia. They were the authors and expositors of certain religious rites, which they celebrated with dances. According to mythology they played a part at the birth of Jupiter. They were sometimes called Idæan Dactyli. Hence their name was given to the ministers of the worship of the Great Mother among the Phrygians, which was celebrated with a kind of religious frenzy. The Curetes were also called Corybantes. Hence also arose the confusion between the religious rites observed in Crete, Phrygia, and Samothrace. Again, on the other hand, the Curetes have been mistaken for an Ætolian people, bearing the same name. Heyne, Not. ad Virgil. Æn. iii. 130. Religion. et Sacror. cum furore peract. Orig. Comm. Soc. R. Scient. Gotting. vol. viii. Dupuis, origin de tous les cultes, tom. 2. Sainte Croix Mém. pour servir à la religion Secrète, &c., Job. Guberleth. Diss. philol. de Myster. deorum Cabir. 1703. Frèret. Recher. pour servir à l’histoire des Cyclopes, &c. Acad. des Inscript. &c., vol. xxiii. His. pag. 27. 1749.
[700] τοσαύτη ποικιλία, will bear also to be translated, id tantum varietatis, “this difference only,” as Groskurd observes.
[701] M. de Saint Croix (Recherches sur les Mystères, &c. sect. 2, page 25) is mistaken in asserting that “Strabo clearly refutes the statements of those who believed that the Cabeiri, Dactyli, Curetes, Corybantes, and Telchines, were not only the same kind of persons, but even separate members of the same family.” It appears to me, on the contrary, that this was the opinion adopted by our author. Du Theil.
[702] προσθεὶς τὸν οἰκεῖον τῇ ἱστορίᾳ φυσικὸν λόγον. rationem naturalem, utpote congruentum huc, historiæ adjiciens. Xylander. Or paraphrased, “The history of this people will receive additional and a fitting illustration by a reference to physical facts,” such as the manner of wearing their hair, tonsure, &c.
[703] ἑλκεχίτωνας. The words καὶ κρώβυλον καὶ τέττιγα ἐμπλεχθῆναι appear, according to Berkel. ad Steph. p. 74, to be here wanting, “and to bind the hair in the form of the Crobulus and ornamented with a grasshopper.” The hair over the forehead of the Apollo Belvidere is an example of the crobulus.
[704] Herod. vii. 208.
[705] κουρὰν τριχός
[706] κόραις καὶ κόροις
[707] Strabo therefore considered the 193, 194, 195 verses of Il. xix. as authentic. Heyne was inclined to consider them as an interpolation, in which he is supported by other critics.
[708] Il. xix. 248. The text is probably mutilated, and Strabo may have quoted the verses in Homer in which Merion is represented as dancing in armour. Il. xvi. 617.