Mythology
In Greek mythology, Hermes was born in a sacred cave on the mountain, and so Cyllenius is a frequent epithet of his. The Homeric Hymn Hymn to Pan recalled that "Hermes ... came to Arkadia ... there where his sacred place is as god of Kyllene. For there, though a god, he used to tend curly-fleeced sheep." In ancient times there was a temple and statue dedicated to him on the mountain's summit.
Hyginus records that it was on Cyllene that the seer Tiresias changed sex when he struck two copulating snakes.
Cyllene (or Kyllene) herself was a mountain nymph (an oread) who had taken for her consort Pelasges in the most ancient times that Greek mythographers could recall. There was a port in Elis in Antiquity named "Cyllene" near the mouth of the Alfeios River, where the traveler Pausanias noted the image of Hermes, "most devoutly worshiped by the inhabitants, is merely the male member upright on the pedestal." Several modern places are also named Kyllini.
The Pleiades were born on Mount Kyllini.
Read more about this topic: Mount Kyllini
Famous quotes containing the word mythology:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)