Mount Ida (Turkey)

In ancient times, the mountain was dedicated to the worship of Cybele, who at Rome therefore was given the epithet Idaea Mater.

The oldest collection of Sibylline utterances, the Sibylline Books, appears to have been made about the time of Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida; it was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. From Gergis the collection passed to Erythrae, where it became famous as the oracles of the Erythraean Sibyl. It seems to have been this very collection, or so it would appear, which found its way to Cumae (see the Cumaean Sibyl) and from Cumae to Rome.

Mount Ida owes much of its fame to the work of the poet Homer, gaining renown from having been mentioned in his epic poem the Iliad. It is the setting for numerous episodes in Ancient Greek myth.

Idaea was a nymph, mate of the river god Scamander, and mother of King Teucer the Trojan king. The Scamander River flowed from Mount Ida across the plain beneath the city of Troy, and joined the Hellespont north of the city.

At an earlier time, on Mount Ida, Ganymede, the son of Tros or perhaps of Laomedon, both kings of Troy, was desired by Zeus, who descended in the form of an eagle and swept up Ganymede, to be cupbearer to the Olympian gods.

On the sacred mountain, the nymphs who were the daughter-spirits of the river Cebrenus, had their haunt, and one, Oenone, who had the chthonic gifts of prophetic vision and the curative powers of herb magic, wed Paris, living as a shepherd on Mount Ida. Unbeknownst to all, even to himself, Paris was the son of Priam, king of Troy. He was there on Mount Ida, experiencing the rustic education in exile of many heroes of Greek mythology, for his disastrous future effect on Troy was foretold at his birth, and Priam had him exposed on the sacred slopes. When the good shepherd who was entrusted with the baby returned to bury the exposed child, he discovered that he had been suckled by a she-bear (a totem animal of the archaic goddess Artemis) and took the child home to be foster-nursed by his wife.

When Eris ("discord") cast the Apple of Discord, inscribed "for the fairest", into the wedding festivities of Peleus with Thetis, three great goddesses repaired to Mount Ida to be appraised. By a sacred spring on the mountainside, in "the Judgment of Paris", the grown youth Paris awarded it to Aphrodite, who offered Helen for a bribe, earning the perpetual enmity of the discredited goddesses Hera and Athena to the Trojan cause (Bibliotheca 3.12.5).

Anchises, father of Aeneas, also of the Trojan royal house, was tending sheep on Mount Ida when he was seduced by Aphrodite. Their union led to the birth of Aeneas, the mythological progenitor of Rome's Julio-Claudian dynasty and a founder of Rome in a tradition alternative to that of Romulus and Remus.

The mountain is the scene of several mythic events in the works of Homer. At its summit, the Olympian gods gathered to watch the progress of the epic fight. But the mountain was the sacred place of the Goddess, and Hera's powers were so magnified on Mount Ida, that she was able to distract Zeus with her seductions, just long enough to permit Poseidon to intercede on behalf of the Argives to drive Hektor and the Trojans back from the ships.

During the Trojan War, in an episode recorded in Epitome of the fourth book of the Bibliotheca, Achilles with some of the Achaean chiefs laid waste the countryside, and made his way to Ida to rustle the cattle of Aeneas. But Aeneas fled, and Achilles killed the cowherds and Mestor, son of Priam, and drove away the sacred kine (Epitome 3.32). Achilles briefly refers to this incident as he prepares to duel with Aeneas during the siege of Troy. (Iliad XX)

After the Trojan War, the only surviving son of Priam, Helenus, retired to Mount Ida, where he was surprised and became the captive of Neoptolemus. In the Aeneid a shooting star falls onto the mountain in answer to the prayer of Anchises to Jupiter.

In the Bronze Age, the region around the mountain complex had a somewhat chequered ethnography. There is evidence for the following peoples with a reasonable degree of probability:

• The Tjeker in Ayvacık, Çanakkale Province, which the Greeks called the Teucri. They were probably from Crete and are most likely to have been the source of the name, Mount Ida, which they took from Mount Ida, Crete.

In historical times, Xerxes' march took him past Mount Ida (Herodotus VII:42).