in Antiquity, the priests of Rhea or Cybele, who celebrated the worship of the great mother of the gods by arraying themselves in full armour, and performing orgiastic dances in the forests and on the mountains of Phrygia, to the sound of flutes, horns, drums, and cymbals. By Strabo they are associated with the Cabiri, the Idaean Dactyls, the Telchines, and the Curetes. In the Alys of Catullus there is a picturesque description of the Corybantes, who are represented as transported to a pitch of the most extravagant enthusiasm. Accordingly, it is observed by Maximus Tyrius, that persons possessed with the Corybantic spirit became demented whenever they heard the sound of a flute; and hence the word κορυβάντια, to corybantize, was used in reference to a person's being transported, or possessed with a devil. The feminine epithets applied to the Corybantes by Catullus indicate that these priests were eunuchs.

Diodorus Siculus relates, that Corybas, the son of Jason and Cybele, instituted the worship of the mother of the gods in Phrygia, and gave his own name to the priests, as he passed through that country with his uncle Dardanus. 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 along dancing, or tossing the head.

When the worship of Cybele was introduced at Rome (B.C. 204), her priests were called Galli. The etymology of this name is uncertain. Festus, Ovid, and others, would derive it from the river Galius (now Gatispo), in Phrygia, regarding which it was fabled, that those who drank of its waters became mad and emasculated themselves. (Ovid, Fast. iv.) See CABIRI.