in Pagan mythology, the daughter of Cœlus and Terra, and wife of Saturn. She is supposed to be the same as Ceres, Rhea, Ops, Vesta, Bona Mater, Magna Mater, Berecynthia, Dindymene, &c. According to Diodorus, she was the daughter of a Lydian prince, and, immediately after her birth, exposed on a mountain. But she was preserved by sucking some of the wild beasts of the forest, and received the name of Cybele from the mountain where her life had been preserved. When she returned to her father's court, she had an intrigue with Atys, a beautiful youth, whom her father mutilated. All the mythologists are unanimous in mentioning the amours of Atys and Cybele. In Phrygia the festivals of Cybele were observed with the greatest solemnity. Her priests, called Corybantes and Galli, were not admitted into the service of the goddess without undergoing a previous mutilation. In the celebration of the festivals, they imitated the manners of madmen, and filled the air with shrieks and howlings mixed with the confused noise of drums, tabrets, bucklers, and spears. This was done in commemoration of the sorrow of Cybele for the loss of her favourite Atys. Cybele was generally represented as a robust woman far advanced in pregnancy, to intimate, it is said, the fecundity of the earth. She held keys in her hand, and her head was crowned with rising turrets, and sometimes with the leaves of an oak. She is also represented as riding in a chariot drawn by two tame lions, while Atys follows by her side, carrying a ball in his hand, and supporting himself upon a fir-tree, which is sacred to the goddess. Sometimes she is represented with a sceptre in her hand, and her head covered with a tower. She is also seen with many breasts, to show that the earth gives aliments to all living creatures; and she generally carries two lions under her arms. From Phrygia the worship of Cybele passed into Greece, and was solemnly established at Eleusis under the name of the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ceres. The Romans, by order of the Sibylline books, brought the statue of the goddess from Pessinus into Italy; and when the ship which carried it had run on a shallow bank of the Tiber, the virtue and innocence of Claudia were vindicated in removing it with her girdle. It is supposed that the mysteries of Cybele were first known about 257 years before the Trojan war, or 1580 years before the Augustan age.