La musica e il culto di Cibele nell'Occidente Romano

The paper represents the first attempt to examine as a whole the issue of the musical aspects of the Phrygian or “metroac” cult (whose main deities were Cybele and Attis) in the Western Mediterranean, with particular regard to Rome itself and certain provinces, including Gaul. The first party analyses the literary sources while the second part describes the musical instruments (consisting almost entirely of percussion and wind instruments: tympani, cymbals, tibiae Phrygiae and so on) played by persons serving the cult, but also by the gods themselves (see the syrinx of Attis). This part is based almost entirely on the iconographical documentation, a great part of which is represented by the taurobolic altars found in Rome and in many sites in Gaul. The final sections are devoted to some aspects that have so far received relatively little attention, like dance and song in the metroac sphere (especially from the point of view of the documents concerning the hymnologi, composers and singers certainly connected with Cybele, but possibly not only with her, and known to us only through a small number of inscriptions found in Rome).