The Orphic Hymns

Of Rhea. Incense: aromatics. Lady Rhea, daughter of many-formed Protogonos, whose holy-wheeled chariot the bull-slaying lion draws; drum-beating maiden of the clashing bronze, lover of frenzy,

Rhea here is the goddess the Greeks of Asia Minor worshipped as the Mother of the Gods, whose home was Phrygia. Lions draw her chariot, and her rites were loud: the drum (tympanon) and the clashing bronze cymbals are in her titles, and in Euripides' Bacchae Dionysus calls the drums "the invention of mother Rhea and of me." Philoistromanēs joins oistros, the gadfly whose sting drives cattle wild and the usual Greek word for frenzy, with mania, madness: she loves the wild state her worshippers fall into. Hesiod makes Rhea a daughter of Earth and Sky. The hymn names a much older father, Protogonos, the First-born, the god of Hymn 6, who stands at the start of the Orphic accounts of creation. The lion itself is an editor's restoration (see the note on lis), and it agrees with the hymn to the Mother of the Gods (27), whose chariot is drawn by "bull-slaying lions."