Sallustius does indeed give examples of each of his five classes of myth, but he only really goes in-depth on the mixed kind. I found his interpretation of The Judgement of Paris to be straightforward enough, but his interpretation of Attis and Kybele gave me more questions than answers, I think!
Kybele is called "the generative principle" and Attis "the creator"; in what way are these distinguished? (I would normally equate the two.)
I hadn't realized the Greeks has a creator god? I was under the impression that they believed the cosmos was, as a whole, more or less eternal.
The first time I read Sallustius, his description of the Milky Way as the place "the body subject to passions" thoroughly confounded me. In the months since, I've found other references to this: Mesopotamian mythology and astrology, Hamlet's Mill, and The Secret of the Incas all talk about the point, which is evidently that the Milky Way—particularly where it intersects the ecliptic—is the bridge between the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. The nature of this connection shifts as the equinoxes precess. (Some astrologers have made attempts at using the intersection point as a fixed marker for sidereal astrology.) It seems that the association was made by the Romans in their festivals, too—while we moderns need to search long and hard among esoteric texts to learn such basics. Ah well!
I couldn't find much information on the Gallus river itself, other than it is in modern Turkey and one of the sources of the Euphrates. If it had special significance outside of this interpretation of the myth, I was unable to find it!
Is a nymph, in this context, assumed to be a "created" being? That is, are we talking about Attis forsaking a god for his creation?
Where does Sallustius derive the assumption that there must be a "worst" and thus than generation must be stopped somewhere? I would have assumed that the generative process could go on indefinitely, just as numbers can grow without bound.
Why does Sallustius' explanation leave out where Attis went mad? I would have considered this to be a crucial point of the myth!
It took me quite a few re-readings to make any sense at all of the last couple paragraphs. It seems Sallustius is describing a particular holiday in the Roman calendar? I found searching for this online to be pretty difficult, but my best guess is that this is a reference to the Hilaria? (I apologize for the Wikipedia link, but I wasn't even able to find another source that described the festival in any depth at all!)
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Kybele is called "the generative principle" and Attis "the creator"; in what way are these distinguished? (I would normally equate the two.)
I hadn't realized the Greeks has a creator god? I was under the impression that they believed the cosmos was, as a whole, more or less eternal.
The first time I read Sallustius, his description of the Milky Way as the place "the body subject to passions" thoroughly confounded me. In the months since, I've found other references to this: Mesopotamian mythology and astrology, Hamlet's Mill, and The Secret of the Incas all talk about the point, which is evidently that the Milky Way—particularly where it intersects the ecliptic—is the bridge between the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. The nature of this connection shifts as the equinoxes precess. (Some astrologers have made attempts at using the intersection point as a fixed marker for sidereal astrology.) It seems that the association was made by the Romans in their festivals, too—while we moderns need to search long and hard among esoteric texts to learn such basics. Ah well!
I couldn't find much information on the Gallus river itself, other than it is in modern Turkey and one of the sources of the Euphrates. If it had special significance outside of this interpretation of the myth, I was unable to find it!
Is a nymph, in this context, assumed to be a "created" being? That is, are we talking about Attis forsaking a god for his creation?
Where does Sallustius derive the assumption that there must be a "worst" and thus than generation must be stopped somewhere? I would have assumed that the generative process could go on indefinitely, just as numbers can grow without bound.
Why does Sallustius' explanation leave out where Attis went mad? I would have considered this to be a crucial point of the myth!
It took me quite a few re-readings to make any sense at all of the last couple paragraphs. It seems Sallustius is describing a particular holiday in the Roman calendar? I found searching for this online to be pretty difficult, but my best guess is that this is a reference to the Hilaria? (I apologize for the Wikipedia link, but I wasn't even able to find another source that described the festival in any depth at all!)