5. In Timotheus, who was no mean mythologist, and also in others equally well informed, the birth of the Great Mother of the gods, and the origin of her rites, are thus detailed, being derived—as he himself writes and suggests—from learned books of antiquities, and from hisacquaintance with the most secret mysteries:—Within the confines of Phrygia, he says, there is a rock of unheard-of wildness in every respect, the name of which is Agdus, so named by the natives of that district. Stones taken from it, as Themis by her oracle1066    So Ovid also (Metam., i. 321), and others, speak of Themis as the first to give oracular responses, had enjoined, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw upon the earth, at that time emptied of men; from which this Great Mother, too, as she is called, was fashioned along with the others, and animated by the deity. Her, given over to rest and sleep on the very summit of the rock, Jupiter assailed with lewdest1067    So the ms. and edd., reading quam incestis, except Orelli, who adopts the conjecture of Barthius, nequam—“lustful Jupiter with lewd desires.” desires. But when, after long strife, he could not accomplish what he had proposed to himself, he, baffled, spent his lust on the stone. This the rock received, and with many groanings Acdestis1068    So the ms. and edd., except Hildebrand and Oehler, who throughout spell Agdestis, following the Greek writers, and the derivation of the word from Agdus. is born in the tenth month, being named from his mother rock. In him there had been resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition beyond control, a lust made furious, and derived from both sexes.1069    So Ursinus suggested, followed by later edd., ex utroque (ms. utra.) sexu; for which Meursius would read ex utroque sexus—“and a sex of both,” i.e., that he was a hermaphrodite, which is related by other writers. He violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led him; he regarded not gods nor men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself; he contemned earth, heaven, and the stars.

1088B V. Apud Timotheum non ignobilem theologorum virum, nec non apud alios aeque doctos super magna deorum matre, superque sacris ejus, origo haec sita est, ex reconditis antiquitatum libris, et ex intimis eruta (quemadmodum ipse scribit, insinuatque), mysteriis. In Phrygiae finibus inauditae per omnia vastitatis petra, inquit, est quaedam, cui nomen est Agdus, 1089A regionis ejus ab indigenis sic vocatae. Ex ea lapides sumptos, sicut Themis mandaverat praecinens, in orbem mortalibus vacuum Deucalion jactavit et Pyrrha: ex quibus cum caeteris et haec, Magna quae dicitur, informata est Mater, atque animata divinitus. Hanc in vertice ipso petrae datam quieti et somno, nequam incestis Jupiter cupiditatibus appetivit. Sed cum obluctatus diu id, quod sibi promiserat, obtinere nequisset, voluptatem in lapidem fudit victus. Hinc petra concepit, et mugitibus editis multis prius, mense nascitur decimo materno ab nomine cognominatus Acdestis. Huic robur invictum, et ferocitas animi 1090A fuerat intractabilis, insana et furialis libido, et ex utroque sexu, vi rapta divastare, disperdere, immanitas quo animi duxerat, non deos curare, non homines, nec praeter se quidquam potentius credere: terras, coelum et sidera contemnere.