These male dancers in armor, kept time to a drum and the rhythmic stamping of their feet. Dance, according to Greek thought, was one of the civilizing activities, like wine-making or music. The dance in armor (the "Pyrrhic dance" or Pyrriche) was a male coming-of-age initiation ritual linked to a warrior victory celebration. The French classicist Henri Jeanmaire has shown that both the Kouretes and Cretan Zeus (called "the greatest kouros" in Cretan hymns) were intimately connected with the transition of young men into manhood in Cretan cities (in Couroi et Courètes: essai sur l'éducation spartiate et sur les rites d'adolescence dans l'antiquité hellénique, Lille, 1939).
The Phrygian Korybantes were often confused with other ecstatic male confraternities, such as the Idaean Dactyls or the Cretan Kouretes, spirit-youths (kouroi) who acted as guardians of the infant Zeus. In the Greek telling of Zeus's birth, the Kouretes' ritual clashing spears and shields were interpreted as intended to drown out the infant god's cries, and prevent his discovery by his father Cronus. Ovid in Metamorphoses says they were born from rainwater, Ouranos fertilizing Gaia, which might connect them with the Pelasgian Hyades. Korybantes or Kouretes also presided over the infancy of Dionysus, another god who was born as a babe, and of Zagreus, a Cretan child of Zeus. The wild ecstasy of their cult can be compared to the female Maenads who followed Dionysus.
The scholar Jane Ellen Harrison wrote that besides being guardians, nurturers, and initiators of the infant Zeus, the Kouretes were primitive magicians and seers. She also wrote that they were metal workers and that metallurgy was considered an almost magical art. There were several "tribes" of Korybantes, including the Cabeiri, the Korybantes Euboioi, the Korybantes Samothrakioi. Hoplodamos and his Gigantes were counted among Korybantes, and Titan Anytos was considered a Kourete.
References
Sources
- Jane Ellen Harrison. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912. (The University of Chicago, EOS - Themis p. 1) (The University of Chicago, EOS - Themis p. 26)
External links
- Theoi Project - Korybantes and Kouretes
- Long review (in English) of Paola Ceccarelli, La pirrica nell' antichità greco romana: Studi sulla danza armata, 1998
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