Religion
One of the Carian ritual centers was Mylasa, where they worshipped their supreme god, called 'the Carian Zeus' by Herodotus. Unlike Zeus, this was a warrior god.
It is possible that the goddess Hecate, the patron of pathways and crossroads, originated among the Carians. Herodotus calls her Athena and says that her priestess would grow a beard when disaster pended.
On Mount Latmos near Miletus, the Carians worshipped Endymion, who was the lover of the Moon and fathered fifty children. Endymion slept eternally, in the sanctuary devoted to him, which lasted into Roman times.
There is at least one named priestess known to us from this region, Carminia Ammia who was priestess of Thea Maeter Adrastos and of Aphrodite.
Read more about this topic: Carians
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“No, no; Religion is a Spring
That from some secret, golden Mine
Derives her birth, and thence doth bring
Cordials in every drop, and Wine;”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)
“The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrine for a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)