Cabeiri Sentence Examples

It was, like Samothrace, a seat of the worship of the Cabeiri.

Cyllene was reputed to be his birthplace, the islands of Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace, in which he was associated with the Cabeiri and Attica.

She is closely connected with the old constellation worship and the religion of Samothrace, the chief seat of the Cabeiri, where she was generally supposed to dwell.

This mountainous character and the absence of any tolerable harbour - Pliny, in enumerating the islands of the Aegean, calls it "importuosissima omnium" - prevented it from ever attaining to any political importance, but it enjoyed great celebrity from its connexion with the worship of the Cabeiri, a mysterious triad of divinities, concerning whom very little is known, but who appear, like all the similar deities venerated in different parts of Greece, to have been a remnant of a previously existing Pelasgic mythology.

The name appears to be of Phoenician origin, signifying the "great" gods, and the Cabeiri seem to have been deities of the sea who protected sailors and navigation, as such often identified with the Dioscuri, the symbol of their presence being St Elmo's fire.

Their cult at an early date was united with that of Demeter and Kore, with the result that two pairs of Cabeiri appeared, Hephaestus and Demeter, and Cadmilus and Kore.

Roman antiquarians identified the Cabeiri with the three Capitoline deities or with the Penates.

In Lemnos an annual festival of the Cabeiri was held, lasting nine days, during which all the fires were extinguished and fire brought from Delos.

Demetrius Poliorcetes, Lysimachus and Arsinoe regarded the Cabeiri with especial favour, and initiation was sought, not only by large numbers of pilgrims, but by persons of distinction.

In 1888 interesting details as to the Boeotian cult of the Cabeiri were obtained by the excavations of their temple in the neighbourhood of Thebes, conducted by the German archaeological institute.

The Cabeiri were held in even greater esteem by the Romans, who regarded themselves as descendants of the Trojans, whose ancestor Dardanus (himself identified in heroic legend with one of the Cabeiri) came from Samothrace.

The identification of the three Capitoline deities with the Penates, and of these with the Cabeiri, tended to increase this feeling.

Like the Curetes, Dactyli, Telchines and Cabeiri, however, they represent primitive gods of procreative significance, who survived in the historic period as subordinate deities associated with a form of the Great Mother goddess, their relation to the Great Mother of the Gods, Cybele, being comparable with that of Attis.