Ebook: Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis

The present work is the author's English translation and expansion of her earlier work, I culti olientali in Sicilia (EPRO 31 [Leiden: Brill, 1973]). Gasparro, an authority on Greco-Roman mystery cults and gnosticism, is also known for her learned contributions to several colloquia organized under the leadership of Ugo Bianchi. This new work provides a summary of these earlier investigations.

The six chapters of the book are arranged according to the main periods in the history of the cult of Cybele and Attis, focusing on the extremely difficult problem of its soteriology. The sources — scarce, scattered, and diverse in nature and provenance — present the interpreter with extraordinary challenges. Combining the history of religions approach with a detailed historical and philological examination of the texts, inscriptions, and monuments, the author succeeds admirably in displaying before the reader the bewildering complexities of the cult and the intriguing possibilities for its interpretation. Such situations, of course, are open invitations to fill in the gaps with theories of speculations based on comparative materials from other cults, but the author, while exploring these possibilities, resists temptation and does not consider confessing ignorance to be a failure of scholarship.