Magna Mater took the beautiful Phrygian shepherd Attis as her beloved, binding him to her with a vow of eternal fidelity.
Roman cult identified Ops with Magna Mater, merging the ancient Italian goddess of stored harvest with the Phrygian Great Mother into a single figure of earth's abundance and maternal power.
Magna Mater struck Attis with divine madness for breaking his vow of faithfulness, and the frenzied youth castrated himself beneath a pine tree and bled to death on the Phrygian hillside.
Magna Mater destroyed the nymph Sagaritis by felling her tree, punishing Attis's infidelity by killing the rival who had stolen his devotion.
The Galli are Magna Mater's devoted eunuch priests, bound to her service by the primal act of self-castration that recalls Attis's death beneath the sacred pine.
Magna Mater is the Roman adoption of the Phrygian-Greek goddess Cybele. Her sacred stone was brought from Pessinus to Rome in 204 BCE, and Roman writers consistently identified the two as the same deity.
Magna Mater transformed Aeneas's Trojan fleet into sea nymphs when Turnus tried to burn the ships, which had been built from her sacred pines on Mount Ida.
When Magna Mater's sacred stone arrived at Ostia in 204 BCE and the ship ran aground in the shallows, the accused matron Claudia Quinta seized the tow-rope and pulled the vessel free with miraculous ease, proving her chastity and the goddess's divine favor in a single act.
In the Attis myth, Magna Mater appealed to Jupiter to preserve Attis's body from decay after his death. Jupiter granted her request, and the Sibylline Books kept under Jupiter's authority ordained her introduction to Rome.
The Sibylline Books directed Rome to bring Magna Mater from Pessinus to Italy during the Second Punic War, prophesying that only the Great Mother could drive Hannibal from Italian soil.
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