THOMAS, an extraordinary personage, who seems to have made himself notorious by his whimsical extravagances, was the son of a clergyman, and born at Oldcombe, in Somersetshire, in 1577. He acquired Greek and Latin at Oxford, and proceeding afterwards to London, was received into the household of Henry prince of Wales. If Coryate was not over witty himself, he got acquainted with the wits of that time, and served to exercise their abilities, having more learning than judgment. He was a great peripatetic, for, in 1608, he took a long journey on foot, and, after he returned, published his travels under the strange title of Crudities hastily gobbled up in Five Monthly Travels in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhettia, Heletia, some parts of High Germany, and the Netherlands, London, 1611; 4to. In 1612 he set out again with a resolution to spend ten years in travelling, and proceeded first to Constantinople; but after travelling over great part of the East, he died of a flux at Surat, in the East Indies.

CORYBANTRS, in Antiquity, priests of Cybele; who danced and capered to the sound of flutes and drums. Catullus, in his poem called Atys, gives a picturesque description of the Corybantes, whom he represents as sheer madmen. Accordingly, Maximus Tyrius says, that those possessed with the spirit of the Corybantes, as soon as they heard the sound of a flute, were seized with an enthusiasm, and lost the use of their reason; and hence the Greeks used the word κορυβάντης, to corybantize, to signify a person's being transported, or possessed with a devil. Some say that the Corybantes were all eunuchs; and that it is on this account that Catullus in his Atys always uses feminine epithets and relatives in speaking of them.

Didorus Siculus remarks, that Corybas, son of Jason and Cybele, passing through Phrygia with his uncle Danaus, instituted there the worship of the mother of the gods, and gave his own name to the priests. But Strabo states it as the opinion of some, that the Corybantes were children of Jupiter and Calliope, and the same with the Cabiri. Others, however, think that the word had its origin from the circumstance, that the Corybantes always went dancing along, or tossing the head.