Library › Greek: Epic › Hymn 14 to the Mother of the Gods
Drums, castanets, and flutes, and the cries of wolves and bright-eyed lions among the echoing hills: with this wild soundscape Hymn 14 to the Mother of the Gods honors the great mother goddess whom the Greeks identified with Rhea and, increasingly, with the Anatolian Cybele. It is one of the short Ancient Greek epic hymns of the Homeric collection, of uncertain archaic or later date.
In only a few lines the hymn captures the ecstatic, clashing music that marked the Mother’s worship as it spread through the Greek world. It is an early literary witness to a cult that would flourish for centuries, reaching Rome itself.
About this edition. The Greek text is that of the Perseus Digital Library. Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).