Geography

​And bringing Silenus and Marsyas and Olympus together into one, and recording them as inventors of flutes, they again and in this way bring the Dionysiac and the Phrygian rites together into one, and they often confuse Ida and Olympus, making them sound like the same mountain. Now there are four hills called Olympus belonging to Ida near Antandria, and there is also the Mysian Olympus, which borders on, but is not the same as, Ida. In any case, Sophocles, having represented Menelaus in the Polyxena as hastening to depart from Troy, and Agamemnon as wishing to be left behind a little for the sake of propitiating Athena, introduces Menelaus as saying: “But you, staying behind somewhere in the Idaean land, gather the flocks of Olympus and offer sacrifice.”

​And with the flute and the noise of castanets, cymbals, and drums, and with shouts, cries of evoe, and stamping of feet, they invented appropriate words, and also some of the names by which they called the attendants, dancers, and ministers of the sacred rites: Cabeiri, Corybantes, Panes, Satyrs, and Tityri, and the god Bacchus, and Rhea Cybele and Cybebe and Dindymene, according to their very locations. And Sabazius also belongs to the Phrygian rites, being in a way the child of the Mother, and he himself delivers the rites of Dionysus.

​And similar to these are also the rites among the Thracians, both the Cotyttia and the Bendideia, among whom also the Orphic rites had their origin. Now Aeschylus mentions Cotys who is worshipped among the Edonians, and the instruments around her. For having said: “Revered Cotys among the Edonians, and those who have the mountain instruments,” he immediately brings in the attendants of Dionysus: “One, holding in his hands the bombyces, the labor of the lathe, fills out the finger-pointing melody, a call that induces madness; another makes a din with bronze-bound cymbals .” And again: “The plucking of strings raises a shout; and bull-voiced, frightening mimics bellow from some unseen place, and a semblance of a drum, like underground thunder, is borne along, deeply terrifying.” For these things resemble the Phrygian rites; and indeed it is not unlikely that, just as the Phrygians themselves are colonists of the Thracians, so also the sacred rites were transferred from there. And by bringing Dionysus and the Edonian Lycurgus together into one, they hint at the similarity of their sacred rites.

​And from the melody and the rhythm and the instruments, all music has been considered Thracian and Asiatic. And this is clear from the places in which the Muses are honored; for Pieria, Olympus, Pimpla, and Leibethrum were in ancient times Thracian places and mountains, though now the Macedonians hold them; and the Thracians who settled in Boeotia consecrated Helicon to the Muses, the very ones who also consecrated the cave of the Leibethrian Nymphs. And those who cultivated ancient music are said to be Thracians: Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris; and Eumolpus also got his name from there; and those who consecrated the whole of Asia as far as India to Dionysus also transfer the greater part of music from there; and one poet says: “striking the Asiatic cithara,” while another calls the flutes Berecyntian and Phrygian; and some of the instruments are named in a barbarian tongue: nablas, sambyce, barbiton, magadis, and many others.