Agdistis

Agdistis (Ancient Greek: Ἄγδιστις) is a deity of Greek, Roman, and Anatolian mythology who was a Hermaphrodite, having been born with both male and female reproductive organs. The deity was closely associated with the Phrygian goddess Cybele.

The geographer Pausanias (7.17.10–12) records the following story about Agdistis, which he says the people of Pessinus told. Zeus, while asleep, spilled some of his semen on the earth, which in time gave rise to a deity (δαίμων) with both male and female sexual organs called Agdistis. Now the other gods, afraid of Agdistis, cut off the male genitalia, and from this grew an almond tree. The daughter of the Phrygian river-god Sangarius picked an almond from this tree and placing it in her bosom she became pregnant. She gave birth to a son Attis who was abandoned in the wild. Attis was cared for by a male goat, and grew to be a divinely beautiful youth and Agdistis fell in love with the boy. But Attis was sent to Pessinus to be married to the king's daughter, and when the marriage hymn was sung Agdistis appeared, and driven mad both Attis and the king castrated themselves. Attis died from his wound but Agdistis, repenting for what had been done to Attis, persuaded Zeus that Attis's body should never decay. In another passage (1.4.5), Pausanias tells us that a mountain at Pessinus was called "Mount Agdistis", and that Attis was said to be buried there.

Another much longer version of Agdistis's story, was apparently handed down by Timotheus, an Athenian Eumolpid (c. 300 BC). According to Arnobius, an early fourth-century Christian apologist:

In Timotheus, who was no mean mythologist, and also in others equally well informed, the birth of the Great Mother of the gods, and the origin of her rites, are thus detailed, being derived (as he himself writes and suggests) from learned books of antiquities, and from [his acquaintance with] the most secret mysteries

Arnobius goes on to recount the story as follows. There was a rock in Phrygia called Agdus, from which this Great Mother was fashioned. Now Jupiter (the Roman Zeus) desired to have intercourse with her, but unable to do so, let his seed fall upon the rock. From this rock was eventually born Agdistis, named so after Agdus the mothering rock. In Agdistis was:

resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition beyond control, a lust made furious, and [derived] from both sexes! He violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led him ; he regarded not gods or men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself ; he contemned earth, heaven, and the stars.

After the gods, in their councils, had often considered what could be done to curb Agdistis, Liber (the Roman Dionysus), taking the task upon himself, caused Agdistis to be become drunk and fall fast asleep. With a snare Liber tied Agdistis's foot to his genitals. When Agdistis finally woke up and stood, he tore his own genitals off. And from these and the immense flow of blood upon the earth grew a pomegranate tree. Now Sangarius's daughter Nana placed one of the fruits from the tree in her bosom, and as above, became pregnant with the boy Attis. When the pregnancy is discovered by her father, Nana is shut up in order to starve her to death. But she is kept alive by the Mother of the gods, Attis is born, and Sangarius orders the child exposed. As before the child is found and nurtured, and grows to be a surpassingly beautiful youth, whom the Mother of the gods loved "exceedingly". And, as Attis grew up, Agdistis was his constant secret companion:

fondling him, and bound [to him] by wicked compliance with his lust in the only way now possible, leading him through the wooded glades, and presenting him with the spoils of many wild beasts, which the boy Attis at first said boastfully were won by his own toil and labour.