Affiliation: University of California, Davis
Lynn Roller is Professor Emerita of Art History and Classics at the University of California, Davis, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1977. She completed her B.A. and M.A. at Bryn Mawr College and received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her major research interests are in Greek art and archaeology, Greek cult practices, and Phrygian art, history, and cult. She has excavated in Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria, and has an ongoing affiliation with the Gordion Expedition in Turkey, and the Gluhite Kamani Project in Bulgaria. She has been a member of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, the American Academy in Rome, the National Humanities Center, and a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, and she has received fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Loeb Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. Her book, In Search of God the Mother: the Cult of Anatolian Kybele won the Wiseman Prize for outstanding scholarly publication in the field of Mediterranean archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America in 2002.
The excavations Phrygian sites such as Gordion, in central Turkey, have uncovered exquisitely beautiful works of wood, metal wares, and pottery, yet much of this material is little known outside of a small number of specialists. This lecture will present some of the most striking examples of Phrygian art and artifacts and examine their materials, techniques, and functions in Phrygian society.
The cult of the Roman Magna Mater, or Cybele, was widespread throughout the Roman Empire. Yet many features of the Cybele cult seem distinctly un-Roman, such as the use of discordant music, colorful costumes, and the presence of eunuch priests. While many Roman authors attributed these aspects of the Cybele cult to the deity’s Phrygian origins, they actually are more widely attested in Italy and the Roman west than in Phrygia. This lecture explores the different responses to the cult of Cybele in the western and eastern parts of the Empire, with special attention to the Cybele cult in Roman-period Phrygia.
While the cult of the goddess Meter, or Cybele, was widespread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, the deity remained a controversial figure, largely due the prominence of eunuch priests in her rituals. This lecture explores the origin and meaning of this practice in Phrygia, the goddess’s ancestral home, and then follows the role of eunuch priests as the cult of Cybele spread to the Greek and Roman worlds.
