antiquity, priests of the goddess Cybele, who, inspired with a sacred fury, danced up and down, tossing their heads, and beating on cymbals or brazen drums. They inhabited mount Ida, in the island of Crete, where they nourished the infant Jupiter, keeping a continual rattling with their cymbals, that his father Saturn, who had resolved to devour all his male offspring, might not hear the child's cries.