Why the Phrygians should
have worshipped the pine above other trees we can only guess.
Perhaps the sight of its changeless, though sombre, green cresting
the ridges of the high hills above the fading splendour of the
autumn woods in the valleys may have seemed to their eyes to mark it
out as the seat of a diviner life, of something exempt from the sad
vicissitudes of the seasons, constant and eternal as the sky which
stooped to meet it. For the same reason, perhaps, ivy was sacred to
Attis; at all events, we read that his eunuch priests were tattooed
with a pattern of ivy leaves. Another reason for the sanctity of the
pine may have been its usefulness. The cones of the stone-pine
contain edible nut-like seeds, which have been used as food since
antiquity, and are still eaten, for example, by the poorer classes
in Rome. Moreover, a wine was brewed from these seeds, and this may
partly account for the orgiastic nature of the rites of Cybele,
which the ancients compared to those of Dionysus. Further,
pine-cones were regarded as symbols or rather instruments of
fertility.
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