Galloi

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A priest of Cybele, Museum of Cherchell, 2nd-3rd centuries AD

Galloi ( Greek : γάλλοι , Latin : galli ) were the castrated priests or temple servants of the ancient Phrygian Great Goddess Cybele or Great Mother (Greek: μήτηρ ).

The self emasculation

The Galloi castrated themselves with a sharp stone after orgiastically increased frenzy during the solemn trains for the mother- goddess. According to Burkert, the purpose of this public mutilation was to frighten the audience and encourage them to donate. According to Lukian of Samosata , the galloi in Hierapolis wandered around the city after the castration: They received female clothes and jewelry from the house into which they threw the genitals cut off ( Dea Syria 51). After the castration, the galloi were only allowed to feed on the meat of the sacrificed animals. According to Augustine , the belief was widespread that castration could bring the galloi special happiness after death. According to an interpretation of the ritual handed down by Tertullian , which probably reflects a self-portrayal of the galloi , castration corresponds to cutting the ear and the wounds caused on one's own body to plowing the earth.

The ritual of self-mutilation of the galloi was initially limited to the Anatolian and Asia Minor cult circles of the mother goddess and was the actual characteristic of this cult in the priestly state of Pessinus . The oldest Greek evidence of this ritual can be found in Plutarch (Plutarch, Nicias 13.2) and refers to the 5th century BC. Chr.

The subject of the discussion is to what extent and to what extent Galloi, according to today's understanding, were transsexual people who actually felt themselves to be women and therefore followed this path of life, as can be seen in the hijras in India that still exist today . However, self-emasculation was hardly tolerated in Rome. In 102 BC A slave who had emasculated himself as part of the Cybele cult was expelled from the country. Under Domitian , castrating slaves was initially made a punishable offense; under Hadrian, it was forbidden to castrate free or unfree people under the penalty of death, not even with consent. The same applied to self-castration. The doctor in charge and the consenting castrated person were threatened with punishment. Until late antiquity, the regulation was repeatedly confirmed by imperial edicts, threatened with the Talion under Justinian .

Founding legends

Statue of a Gallos

In addition to the Attis myth, a founding legend of the ritual of self-castration of the galloi has been handed down by Lukian of Samosata ( Dea Syra , 19-26). According to this legend, the Syrian queen Stratonikes was commissioned in a dream to build a temple for the great goddess in Hierapolis. A boy named Kombabos was given to the queen as a companion for the trip: he foresaw that he would be suspected of having sex with the queen. In order to be able to defend himself against this accusation, Kombabos separated their genitals, embalmed them and left them in a container with the king. When he was later accused by the queen of raping her, Kombabos asked the king to open the container he had left behind and thus to prove his innocence.

A much older Mesopotamian myth, which has often been associated with the ritual performed by the Galloi , is Inanna's journey into the underworld. In the Sumerian myth, Inanna returning from the underworld is accompanied by armed, dangerous beings who cannot eat and can only destroy. The name for these beings is GALA . In Akkadian, kalû referred to the priests who prepared the drum with the hide of the sacrificed bull in secret rites.

The Galli in Rome

Relief depicting a Gallus, Lanuvium, mid-2nd century, Rome, Capitoline Museums

The cult of the Great Goddess was officially named Mater Deum Magna Idaea or Mater Magna in Rome during the Hannibal War in 204 BC. Introduced. Here the cult was supported not only by priests, but also by lay colleges and had a big annual festival in March, the climax of which was the so-called dies sanguinis , the "day of the blood": Even in the ecstatic frenzy brought about here, they emasculated themselves at first galli at times and injured themselves with knives and axes. But from the beginning the Roman state paid attention to a strict separation between Pessinusischen rituals and urban Roman cult. With the ban on castration, the corresponding priesthood was also open to Roman citizens who were subordinate to the Quindecimviri sacris faciundis and had to be confirmed by them. The local cults are subordinated to an archigallus as supervisor, who in turn is appointed by the Quindecimviri sacris faciundis at the request of the municipal authorities. The Archigallus was by no means a castrato, but usually a respected Roman citizen, in the case of Rome during the imperial period mostly noble freedmen. Nevertheless, the cult and associated priesthood, including castrati, spread in the imperial era and in late antiquity .

See also

literature

  • Walter Burkert : Homo necans. Interpretations of ancient Greek sacrificial rites and myths. Berlin 1972.
  • Walter Burkert: Greek Religion of the Archaic and Classical Epoch. Stuttgart 1977.
  • Walter Burkert: Ancient Mysteries. Functions and Salary. Munich 1990.
  • Walter Burkert: Cults of antiquity. Biological foundations of religion. Munich 1998.
  • Florian Martin Müller : On the attributes, jewelry and costume components of the oriental priests of the Cybele. Archaeological and literary sources on Galli and Archigalli (Diploma thesis Innsbruck 2003).
  • Florian Martin Müller: Reflections on the breast ornament of the oriental priests of the Cybele (abstract) , Forum Archaeologiae - journal for classical archeology. 29 / XII / 2003.
  • Florian Martin Müller: Thoughts on the breast ornament of the oriental priests of the Cybele. In: Gabriele Koiner, Manfred Lehner, Thuri Lorenz, Gerda Schwarz (eds.): Files of the 10th Austrian Archaeological Conference in Graz 2003. Phoibos Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-901232-70-1 , pp. 131-136 .
  • Florian Martin Müller: The statue of a Cybele priest in Caesarea Mauretania and the spread of the Cybelekult in Roman North Africa . In: Christiane Franek, Susanne Lamm, Tina Neuhauser, Barbara Porod, Katja Zöhrer (eds.), Thiasos. Festschrift for Erwin Pochmarski on the occasion of his 65th birthday (= publications of the Institute for (Classical) Archeology of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz. Vol. 10). Phoibos Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85161-001-7 , pp. 645-651.

Remarks

  1. ↑ About the identification of the méter with Kybebe / Kybele → Kybele
  2. ↑ Walter Burkert, Cults of Antiquity , pp. 112, 204.
  3. ↑ An English translation of the text in the private homepage Concerning the Syrian Goddess - Part Five - Ch. 50 through 60 ( Memento from May 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Walter Burkert, Ancient Mysteries , p. 93.
  5. ↑ De civitate Dei 7, 26 (quoted from Walter Burkert, Antike Mysterien , p. 31).
  6. ↑ Adversus Marcionem 1, 13 (cit. After W. Burkert, Antique mysteries , p 69).
  7. ↑ Bernadotte Perrin (translation): Plutarch, Nicias 13.2 ( English ) Perseus Digital Library Project. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  8. ^ W. Burkert, Greek Religion , p. 277.
  9. ↑ Filippo Carla-Uhink: Crossing Gender. Transvestism in the Roman Empire as a strategy for the construction of inequality. In: Antje Dresen, Florian Freitag (eds.): Crossing. About staging cultural differences and identities. transcript, Bielefeld 2017, pp. 11-38; here: pp. 25–27.
  10. ↑ Shaun Tougher: Eunuchs. In: Bonnie G. Smith (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Volume 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008, p. 201.
  11. ↑ Gabriel Sanders: Cybele and Attis. In: Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (ed.): The oriental religions in the Roman Empire. Brill, Leiden 1981, pp. 264-291, here: p. 279.
  12. ^ Hermann Ferdinand Hitzig : Castratio . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Col. 1772 f.
  13. ↑ An English translation of the text in the private homepage Concerning the Syrian Goddess - Part Three - Sections 17-27 ( Memento from May 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Summary here after W. Burkert, Cults of antiquity , p. 65.
  15. ↑ See Walter Burkert: Homo necans , pp. 290f. and the literature listed there; P. Taylor, "The GALA and the Gallos", abstract ( Memento from May 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Irma Della Giovampola: La provenenzia del rilievo di Gallus ai Musei Capitolini e le testimonianze del culto della Magna Mater nell ' ager Lanuvinus. In: Horti Hesperidum. Volume 2, 2012, pp. 503-531.
  17. ↑ Walter Burkert, Ancient Mysteries , p. 13
  18. ↑ Walter Burkert: Ancient Mysteries , pp. 40 f., 69.
  19. ↑ Gabriel Sanders: Cybele and Attis. In: Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (ed.): The oriental religions in the Roman Empire. Brill, Leiden 1981, pp. 264-291, here: p. 283.
  20. ↑ Gabriel Sanders: Cybele and Attis. In: Maarten Jozef Vermaseren (ed.): The oriental religions in the Roman Empire. Brill, Leiden 1981, pp. 264-291, in the Roman Empire: pp. 275-289.