Cista (or cista mystica), a basket used for housing sacred snakes in connection with the initiation ceremony into the cult of
Bacchus (
Dionysus). In the Dionysian mysteries a
serpent, representing the god, was carried in a box called a cista on a bed of vine leaves. This may be the Cista mentioned by Clement of
Alexandria which was exhibited as containing the phallus of
Dionysus. The cista mentioned in the mysteries of
Isis may also have held a
serpent, the missing phallus of
Osiris. The
fertility festival of the women of Arretophoria included cereal paste images ‘of serpents and forms of men' , in other words, phallic
symbols.
Several ancient dignitaries put about the rumour that they
had been fathered by a god in
serpent form. The emperor
Augustus was said to have been fathered by a
snake, and
his mother never afterwards lost the marks of its embrace. A
serpent was said to have been found beside the sleeping
Olympias, mother of
Alexander the Great. Her husband, Philip of Macedon, is reputed never to have coupled with the 'Bride of the Serpent' again. Alexander is sometimes connected with the horned
serpent. The healer god, Asclepios, is said to have fathered a son on a woman who is depicted in Asclepios's temple at Sicyon as sitting on a
serpent. Barren women often sought
help at the temples of Asclepios to sleep in the precincts of the abaton. So the Idolitry involed is that of
fertility, to the land or to the Empire, or Empurer.
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