5. In Timotheus, who was no
mean mythologist, and also in others equally well informed, the birth
of the Great Mother of the gods, and the origin of her rites, are thus
detailed, being derived—as he himself writes and
suggests—from learned books of antiquities, and from his
acquaintance with the most secret mysteries:—Within the
confines of Phrygia, he says, there is a rock of unheard-of wildness in
every respect, the name of which is Agdus, so named by the natives of
that district. Stones taken from it, as Themis by her
oracle43044304 had enjoined,
Deucalion and Pyrrha threw upon the earth, at that time emptied of men;
from which this Great Mother, too, as she is called, was fashioned
along with the others, and animated by the deity. Her, given over
to rest and sleep on the very summit of the rock, Jupiter assailed with
lewdest43054305 desires.
But when, after long strife, he could not accomplish what he had
proposed to himself, he, baffled, spent his lust on the stone.
This the rock received, and with many groanings Acdestis43064306 is born in the
tenth month, being named from his mother rock. In him there had
been resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition beyond control,
a lust made furious, and derived from both sexes.43074307 He
violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever
the ferocity of his disposition had led him; he regarded not gods nor
men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself; he contemned
earth, heaven, and the stars.