The Mothers of Engyon

Sicel · deity · pre Greek Sikel Sicani religion (Greco Roman attested) · deity

The Mothers (Greek Meteres) were the goddesses of Engyon (Engyum), a hill-town of the central Sicilian interior whose site is disputed between Gangivecchio near Gangi and Troina. Ancient tradition, reported by Diodorus and, from Posidonius, by Plutarch, made Engyon a foundation of Cretans stranded in Sicily after the death of Minos, who named the town after its spring and transplanted the worship of the Mothers from their homeland; Diodorus, citing Aratus, identifies the goddesses with the nymphs Helike and Kynosoura who nursed the infant Zeus on Cretan Ida and were translated to the sky as the Great and Little Bear. The sanctuary was among the most famous of inland Sicily: Diodorus describes a temple of astonishing size and costly construction, an estate of three thousand sacred cattle and wide lands yielding great revenues, while Plutarch records the heroic relics shown there — spears and bronze helmets inscribed with the names of Meriones and Odysseus — and tells how, in the Second Punic War, the pro-Roman notable Nicias escaped execution by feigning that the Mothers had possessed him with madness, a ruse credible only where their punishing power was feared. Cicero, listing Verres' sacrileges, calls the shrine a temple of the Mater Magna and reports the theft of the Corinthian-bronze corslets, helmets and great water-jars dedicated by P. Scipio Africanus. Modern students of Sicilian religion see in the Mothers an indigenous cult of collective mother-goddesses in Sikel-Sicani country, given a Cretan pedigree in the Hellenistic age and a Roman face by Cicero; the plural cult entity is worshipped jointly, like the twin Palici, and is here registered as a single collective figure.

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