Sabazios
Sabazios (Template:Langx, Template:Small Savázios; alternatively, Sabadios<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>) is a deity originating in Asia Minor.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> He is the horseman and sky father god of the Phrygians and Thracians.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Sabazios gained prominence across the Roman Empire, particularly favored in the Central Balkans due to Thracian influence. Scholarly debate has long debated Sabazios' origins, with current consensus leaning towards his Phrygian roots.<ref name=":0" />
Though the Greeks interpreted Phrygian Sabazios<ref>Variant spellings, like Sawadios in inscriptions, may prove diagnostic in establishing origins, Ken Dowden suggested in reviewing E.N. Lane, Corpus Cultis Jovis Sabazii 1989 for The Classical Review, 1991:125.</ref> as both Zeus and Dionysus,<ref>See interpretatio Graeca.</ref> representations of him, even into Roman times, show him always on horseback, wielding his characteristic staff of power.
Epigraphic evidenceEdit
According to scholars, the deity's name is variously written in epigraphy: Σεβάζιος, Σαβάζοις, Sabazius, Sabadius, Σαβασεἷος.<ref>Tacheva, Margarita. Eastern cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th century BC-4th century AD). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1983. pp. 183-184.</ref>
Thracian/Phrygian SabaziosEdit
It seems likely that the migrating Phrygians brought Sabazios with them when they settled in Anatolia in the early first millennium BCE, and that the god's origins are to be looked for in Macedonia and Thrace. The ancient sanctuary of Perperikon in modern-day Bulgaria, uncovered in 2000,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is believed to be that of Sabazios.Template:Cn
Possible early conflict between Sabazios and his followers and the indigenous mother goddess of Phrygia (Cybele) may be reflected in Homer's brief reference to the youthful feats of Priam, who aided the Phrygians in their battles with Amazons. An aspect of the compromise religious settlement, similar to the other such mythic adjustments throughout Aegean culture, can be read in the later Phrygian King Gordias' adoption "with Cybele"<ref>Later Greek mythographers reduced Cybele's role to "wife" in this context; initially Gordias will have been ruling in the Goddess's name, as her visible representative.</ref> of Midas.
One of the native religion's creatures was the Lunar Bull. Sabazios' relations with the goddess may be surmised in the way that his horse places a hoof on the head of the bull, in a Roman marble relief at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.<ref name="mfa">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Though Roman in date, the iconic image appears to be much earlier.
God on horsebackEdit
More "rider god" steles are at the Burdur Museum, in Turkey. Under the Roman Emperor Gordian III the god on horseback appears on coins minted at Tlos, in neighboring Lycia, and at Istrus, in the province of Lower Moesia, between Thrace and the Danube. It is generally thought that the young emperor's grandfather came from an Anatolian family, because of his unusual cognomen, Gordianus.<ref name="ancients">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The iconic image of the god or hero on horseback battling the chthonic serpent, on which his horse tramples, appears on Celtic votive columns, and with the coming of Christianity it was easily transformed into the image of Saint George and the Dragon, whose earliest known depictions are from tenth- and eleventh-century Cappadocia and eleventh-century Georgia and Armenia.<ref>See Saint George and the Dragon</ref>
Iconography, depictions, and Hellenistic associationsEdit
Among Roman inscriptions from Nicopolis ad Istrum, Sabazios is generally equated with Jove and mentioned alongside Mercury.<ref name="Tacheva-Hitova The Cult of Sabazios">Template:Cite book</ref> Similarly in Hellenistic monuments, Sabazios is either explicitly (via inscriptions) or implicitly (via iconography) associated with Zeus. On a marble slab from Philippopolis, Sabazios is depicted as a curly-haired and bearded central deity among several gods and goddesses. Under his left foot is a ram's head, and he holds in his left hand a sceptre tipped with a hand in the benedictio latina gesture.<ref name="google3">Template:Cite book</ref> Sabazios is accompanied by busts on his right depicting Luna, Pan, and Mercury, and on his left by Sol, Fortuna, and Daphne.<ref name="Tacheva-Hitova The Cult of Sabazios"/> According to Macrobius, Liber and Helios were worshipped among the Thracians as Sabazios;<ref name="Tacheva-Hitova The Cult of Sabazios"/> this description fits other Classical accounts that identify Sabazios with Dionysos. Sabazios is also associated with a number of archeological finds depicting a bronze, right hand in the benedictio latina gesture. The hand appears to have had ritual significance and may have been affixed to a sceptre (as the one carried by Sabazios on the Philippopolis slab). Although there are many variations, the hand of Sabazios is typically depicted with a pinecone on the thumb and with a serpent or pair of serpents encircling the wrist and surmounting the bent ring and pinky fingers. Additional symbols occasionally included on the hands of Sabazios include a lightning bolt over the index and middle fingers, a turtle and lizard on the back of the hand, an eagle, a ram, a leafless branch, the thyrsos, and the Mounted Heros.<ref name="Tacheva-Hitova The Cult of Sabazios"/>
Sabazios in AthensEdit
The ecstatic Eastern rites practiced largely by women in Athens were thrown together for rhetorical purposes by Demosthenes in undermining his opponent Aeschines for participating in his mother's cultic associations:
On attaining manhood you abetted your mother in her initiations and the other rituals, and read aloud from the cultic writings ... You rubbed the fat-cheeked snakes and swung them above your head, crying Euoi saboi and hues attes, attes hues.<ref>Demosthenes, De corona 260; Attis, serpent cult, Sabazios, Dionysus (Aeschines is characterised as "ivy-bearer" and "liknos-carrier"), and "cultic writings", which may have insinuated Orphic connections as well, are not otherwise linked in cult, save in their foreignness in fifth-century Athens.</ref>
Transformation to SabaziusEdit
Transference of Sabazios to the Roman world appears to have been mediated in large part through Pergamum.<ref>Lane 1989.Template:Full</ref> The naturally syncretic approach of Greek religion blurred distinctions. Later Greek writers, like Strabo in the first century CE, linked Sabazios with Zagreus, among Phrygian ministers and attendants of the sacred rites of Rhea and Dionysos.<ref>Strabo, Geography, 10.3.15.</ref> Strabo's Sicilian contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, conflated Sabazios with the secret 'second' Dionysus, born of Zeus and Persephone,<ref>Diodorus Siculus, 4.4.1.</ref> a connection that is not borne out by surviving inscriptions, which are entirely to Zeus Sabazios.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Vermaseren1983>Template:Cite book</ref> The Christian Clement of Alexandria had been informed that the secret mysteries of Sabazius, as practiced among the Romans, involved a serpent, a chthonic creature unconnected with the mounted skygod of Phrygia: Template:"'God in the bosom' is a countersign of the mysteries of Sabazius to the adepts". Clement reports: "This is a snake, passed through the bosom of the initiates".<ref>Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, 1, 2, 16.</ref>
Much later, the Byzantine Greek encyclopedia, Suda (Template:Circa), flatly states
Sabazios ... is the same as Dionysos. He acquired this form of address from the rite pertaining to him; for the barbarians call the bacchic cry "sabazein". Hence some of the Greeks too follow suit and call the cry "sabasmos"; thereby Dionysos [becomes] Sabazios. They also used to call "saboi" those places that had been dedicated to him and his Bacchantes ... Demosthenes [in the speech] "On Behalf of Ktesiphon" [mentions them]. Some say that Saboi is the term for those who are dedicated to Sabazios, that is to Dionysos, just as those [dedicated] to Bakkhos [are] Bakkhoi. They say that Sabazios and Dionysos are the same. Thus some also say that the Greeks call the Bakkhoi Saboi.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
In Roman sites, though an inscription built into the wall of the abbey church of San Venanzio at Ceperana suggested to a Renaissance humanist<ref>Antonio Ivani, writing to his fellow humanist Antonio Medusei, 15 July 1473; noted in Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 1969:116.</ref> it had been built upon the foundations of a temple to Jupiter Sabazius, according to modern scholars not a single temple consecrated to Sabazius, the rider god of the open air, has been located.<ref name=Vermaseren1983/> Small votive hands, typically made of copper or bronze, are often associated with the cult of Sabazios. Many of these hands have a small perforation at the base which suggests they may have been attached to wooden poles and carried in processions. The symbolism of these objects is not well known.<ref name=Vermaseren1983/>
Jewish connectionEdit
The first Jews who settled in Rome were expelled in 139 BCE, along with Chaldaean astrologers by Cornelius Hispalus under a law which proscribed the propagation of the "corrupting" cult of "Jupiter Sabazius", according to the epitome of a lost book of Valerius Maximus:
Gnaeus Cornelius Hispalus, praetor peregrinus in the year of the consulate of Marcus Popilius Laenas and Lucius Calpurnius, ordered the astrologers by an edict to leave Rome and Italy within ten days, since by a fallacious interpretation of the stars they perturbed fickle and silly minds, thereby making profit out of their lies. The same praetor compelled the Jews, who attempted to infect the Roman custom with the cult of Jupiter Sabazius, to return to their homes.<ref>(Valerius Maximus), epitome of Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings, i. 3, 2, see EXEMPLUM 3. [Par.]</ref>
By this it is conjectured that the Romans identified the Jewish YHVH Tzevaot ("sa-ba-oth", "of the Hosts") as Jove Sabazius.
This possibly mistaken connection of Sabazios and Sabaot was often repeated. In a similar vein, Plutarch maintained that the Jews worshipped Dionysus, and that the day of Sabbath was a festival of Sabazius.<ref>Plutarch. Symposiacs, iv, 6.</ref> Plutarch also discusses the identification of the Jewish God with the "Egyptian" Typhon, an identification which he later rejects, however. The monotheistic Hypsistarians worshipped the Most High under this name, which may have been a form of the Jewish God.
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
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- Roller, L.E. "The Anatolian Cult of Sabazios". In: Ancient Journeys: A Festschrift in Honor of Eugene Numa Lane (C. Callaway and P.A. Draper, eds.). STOA, 2002. Online link: https://www.stoa.org/texts/2001/01/0008/
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- Sabazios and Judaism