Korybantes
ancient Greek deities
According to Greek mythology, the Korybantes (; Ancient Greek: Κορύβαντες), also spelled Corybantes or Corybants, were the armed and crested dancers who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. They are also called the Kurbantes in Phrygia.
Etymology
The name Korybantes is of uncertain etymology. Edzard Johan Furnée and R. S. P. Beekes have suggested a Pre-Greek origin.
Others refer the name to *κορυβή (korybé), the Macedonian version of κορυφή (koryphé) "crown, top, mountain peak", explaining their association with mountains, particularly Olympus.
Family
The Korybantes were the offspring of Apollo by either the Muse Thalia, or the nymph Rhetia, or the nymph Danais. One account attests the parentage to Zeus and the Muse Calliope, or to Helios and Athena, or lastly, to Cronus.
Kouretes
The Kouretes (Κουρῆτες), also spelled Kuretes were nine dancers who venerated Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybele. A fragment from Strabo's Book VII gives a sense of the roughly analogous character of these male confraternities, and the confusion rampant among those not initiated:
Many assert that the gods worshipped in Samothrace as well as the Kurbantes and the Korybantes and in like manner the Kouretes and the Idaean Daktyls are the same as the Kabeiroi, but as to the Kabeiroi they are unable to tell who they are.
Grant Showerman in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition addressed the confusion, stating that the Korybantes "are distinguished [from the Kuretes] only by their Asiatic origin and by the more pronouncedly orgiastic nature of their rites".
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