Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Ramsay.

A moon-god, Men, shared divine honours with her, and with a goddess Nana whose son Atys had been the only love of Ma and the victim of her passion.  We are told that she compelled him to emasculate himself in a fit of mad delirium, and then transformed him into a pine tree:  thenceforward her priests made the sacrifice of their virility with their own hands at the moment of dedicating themselves to the service of the goddess.*

* Nana was made out to be the daughter of the river Sangarios.  She is said to have conceived Atys by placing in her bosom the fruit of an almond tree which sprang from the hermaphrodite Agdistis.  This was the form—­extremely ancient in its main features—­in which the legend was preserved at Pessinus.

[Illustration:  098.jpg THE MOTHER-GODDESS AND ATYS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Chantre.  One of the bas-reliefs at Iasilikiaia, to which we shall have occasion to refer later on in Chapter III. of the present volume.

The gods introduced from Thrace by the Phrygians showed a close affinity with those of the purely Asianic peoples.  Precedence was universally given to a celestial divinity named Bagaios, Lord of the Oak, perhaps because he was worshipped under a gigantic sacred oak; he was king of gods and men, then-father,* lord of the thunder and the lightning, the warrior who charges in his chariot.

     * In this capacity he bore the surname Papas.

He, doubtless, allowed a queen-regent of the earth to share his throne,* but Sauazios, another, and, at first, less venerable deity had thrown this august pair into the shade.

* The existence of such a goddess may be deduced from the passage in which Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that Manes, first king of the Phrygians, was the son of Zeus and Demeter.

[Illustration:  099.jpg THE GOD MEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE SUN AND OTHER DEITIES]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Perdrizet.  The last figure on the left is the god Men; the Sun overlooks all the rest, and a god bearing an axe occupies the extreme right of the picture.  The shapes of these ancient aboriginal deities have been modified by the influence of Graeco-Roman syncretism, and I merely give these figures, as I do many others, for lack of better representations.

The Greeks, finding this Sauazios at the head of the Phrygian Pantheon, identified him with their Zeus, or, less frequently, with the Sun; he was really a variant of their Dionysos.  He became torpid in the autumn, and slept a death-like sleep all through the winter; but no sooner did he feel the warmth of the first breath of spring, than he again awoke, glowing with youth, and revelled during his summer in the heart of the forest or on the mountain-side, leading a life of riot and intoxication, guarded by a band of Sauades,