“From the earliest evidence for the recognition of Midas among the Greeks, possibly from his own lifetime, the accomplishments of Midas were closely associated with the favor of the gods. Midas’ prosperity and the fame of his royal judgment were honored among Greeks who came to Delphi in the seventh century, for, as Herodotus notes, “Midas dedicated the royal throne on which he used to sit when he rendered judgments, and it is a sight worth seeing.” Wise judgment was an essential quality of Midas’ kingship, according to the story told at Gordium, since he first exhibited his kingly authority by resolving factional strife in the assembly of the Phrygians. Hesiod, a close contemporary of Midas and of his dedication at Delphi, describes the qualities of just leadership as the attributes of “god-nurtured kings”, by which he was referring both to living kings, of the sort who might appreciate his poetry, and to legendary kings who were, he tells us, actually born from gods. The associations of divinity and sovereignty that Hesiod describes are given concrete expression in the Midas Monument. This union of sovereignty and divinity, in monuments, legends, and cult practices after Midas’ lifetime, has distinctive implications for the motives behind the cult of the Phrygian Mother.
Sovereignty and divinity are inextricable, according to the cult of kingship born in Phrygia. To a remarkable degree, sacred knowledge (the prophetic gift of the mother of Midas, and her instructions to Gordius) and ritual practice (the rites and ceremonies established by Midas, and especially their distinctive music) are in essence sovereignty itself. This is implicit in the story of the kingship of Midas as told by Arrian, and it is explicit in the conclusion to the same tale in Justin’s account, where Midas “filled Phrygia with religious cults, and this, throughout his life, protected him more effectively than could an armed guard.”
Cult practice and the exercise of sovereignty are still more graphically linked in an account of the means by which Midas extended his dominion. The story is related among the military stratagems collected by Polyaenus:
Midas, pretending that he was going to perform rites for the Great Gods, led out the Phrygians in the night with auloi, tympana, and cymbals, and with hidden swords. Townspeople came out of their houses to see the procession; those who were playing the tympana and cymbals slew the spectators as they came into the streets, took possession of their houses, which lay open, and proclaimed Midas tyrant.
This tale has no specific setting, and therefore describes no particular historical event of the reign of Midas. Rather, it describes a concept underlying his kingship, or irresistible tyranny: his ritual procession is conquest. Opening one’s door to the spectacle of the Mother’s rites is prelude to subjection to the king who celebrates those rites. The result is the appropriation of conquered land, and the tyranny of Midas.
Implicit in this tradition is the idea that the rituals that made Midas great could be adopted by others to their benefit, but always with a sense that the resulting strength or prosperity was due to ritual practices that originated in the cult of the Phrygian Mother. Polyaenus tells a similar story of Artemisia, queen of Caria in the time of Xerxes, who captured the city of Latmus by deploying the musical and enthusiastic rites of a procession of the Mother of the Gods.
Nicolaus of Damascus tells a story of dynastic rivalry among the Neleid rulers of Miletus, in which Phrygian rites play a similar role. The ruling king, Leodamas, was slain by a rival, and Leodamas’ children and supporters fled from Miletus to Assesus, where they were besieged by their enemies. Appealing to an oracle for advice, they were told to await the arrival of “helpers from Phrygia, who would exact vengeance for the murder of Leodamas and deliver the Milesians from their troubles.” In due course two young Phrygian men arrived bringing a “covered basket containing sacred objects of the Cabeiri.” They declared that they had been sent by a god’s command to convey sacred objects from Phrygia for the benefit of the people at Assesus and Miletus. The Phrygians were welcomed at Assesus by the Milesians, who “vowed to institute the sacred objects among themselves and grant them honors” if they achieved success. Thereupon the Phrygians performed their customary rituals, and ordered the Milesians “to arm themselves, and to march en masse against their enemies, while the sacred objects were conveyed in front of their phalanx.” Upon their doing these things, a “god-sent terror” fell on their foes, who were routed and slaughtered, and strife was brought to an end at Miletus.
A march of conquest, once again, is depicted as a ritual procession, and the story, moreover, legitimizes the foundation of a Phrygian cult at Miletus. In Nicolaus’ day, in the reign of Augustus, the province of Asia had adopted on its coinage the cista mystica, the “mystic basket” alluded to in this story of early Miletus, as the symbol of its unity and prosperity under the hand of divine providence. This was the container of the mystic sacred objects that were both from Phrygia and of the Cabeiri, uniting the rites of the Mother of the Gods with those observed on Samothrace. Among neighboring peoples as well, conveyance of such a revered ritual talisman at the head of an army, accompanied by enthusiastic music, was an ancient manner of displaying sovereign power. .... The myth-historical context underlying all of these accounts is the endowment of sovereign tyranny to Midas by the Mother, his mother. Midas was the prototypical conqueror, invoked as Lord and Leader of the Host in the archaic Midas Monument. The same monument indicates what later Greek and Latin sources affirm, namely that the rites of the Phrygian Mother were both the means and the justification for his irresistible tyranny. As a cult place dedicated to the memory of Midas and the Mother, the Midas Monument represented one of several places where tyranny was evoked by those who sought to exercise it. As opposed to the portable sacred objects that could be used to transplant the power of tyranny, as was done at Miletus or in Sicily, the rock-cut Midas Monument displayed the basis of sovereign power as a feature of the Phrygian landscape, in the highlands where the chief rivers of western Asia arose, in the native land of Midas’ tyranny. Like the story Herodotus tells attesting the power of the claim that the Phrygians were “the first of mankind,” that the word for bread was first spoken in Phrygia, and, as other sources attest, that Lityerses invented agriculture in that land, the lore of Phrygia asserted that this land was the native home to the greatest king the world had ever known. Anyone who sought sovereign power after Midas’ day, according to this ideology, had to acquire it from the source.”
- Mark Munn, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion. University of California Press, 2006. pp. 88-93.