Atys and the Lion

Sculpture of Atys, Ephesus Archaeological Museum.

 by Brett Rutherford

    Adapted from Dioscorides, The Greek Anthology, vi, 220

Running as only an acolyte can run,
the step and spring that scarcely touches
earth before one foot follows
the other, a single-purpose run
not in Olympic chase, and free

from erotic distractions, gelded
Atys, the self-castrated worshipper
of unrelenting Cybele, flew
up and beyond the treeline, wild
hair tossed every way by winds,
a Boreal restraint as legs leaped
free of the ground. Sardis he sought
in Persian Lydia, a long run,
from Anatolian Pessinus
on the Turkish high plateau.

No matter food, or thirst, or fall,
one frenzy would carry him onward.
But then, in a vale, as the dark
of night came, his hot blood cooled
somewhat, and, spying a shelter spot
beneath an overhanging rock
he climbed there, forsaking the known road.

But lo! There came a Lion, lord
of the forested waste, broad as oak
and huge of maw. Men swallowed
whole were his meat and morsel.
Atys stood still, his eyes to the eyes
of the ravening beast. Then he pulled ’round
the ox-skinned tambour he carried
(one of two gifts for the Sardian temple)
and struck it hard. And again, and again,
he beat with both hands the smitten skin.

Then off as fleet as a frightened deer
the full-maned lion bounded — gone,
and nevermore to trouble the traveler.
And Atys cried out, “Great Mother,
when I reach the banks of the Sangarias,
I shall dedicate to you this dread tambour,
whose roaring saved my life, and this
one other gift, the leather thalame
in which I offer up to you that which
my own blade removed in your honor.”

And on the wild man fled. Others,
like him, followed, thrall
to the all-demanding goddess,
those holy, mutilated madmen
in quest of the dark fire
at the heart of creation.