Cybele in the context of "Orak Island (İzmir)"

The Temple of Cybele or Temple of Magna Mater was Rome's first and most important temple to the Magna Mater ("Great Mother"), who was known to the Greeks as Cybele. It was built to house a particular image or form of the goddess, a meteoric stone brought from Greek Asia Minor to Rome in 204 BC at the behest of an oracle and temporarily housed in the goddess of Victory's Palatine temple. The new temple was dedicated on 11 April 191 BC, and Magna Mater's first Megalesia festival was held on the temple's proscenium.

The temple was sited on the high western slope of the Palatine, overlooking the valley of the Circus Maximus and facing the temple of Ceres on the slopes of the Aventine. It was accessible via a long upward flight of steps from the flattened area or proscenium below, where the goddess's festival games and plays were staged. The goddess's altar was visible both from the proscenium and the temple's interior. The original temple burned down in 111 BC, and was restored by one Metellus, possibly Gaius Caecilius Metellus Caprarius. It burned on a further two occasions in the early Imperial era, and was restored each time by Augustus; his second rebuilding was probably the more sumptuous of the two.

The polos crown (plural poloi; Greek: πόλος) is a high cylindrical crown worn by mythological goddesses of the Ancient Near East and Anatolia and adopted by the ancient Greeks for imaging the mother goddesses Rhea, Cybele and Hera.

The word also meant an axis or pivot and is cognate with the English, 'pole'. It was often open at the top with hair cascading down from the sides, or it could be reduced to a ring.

The cult of Dionysus consisted of devotees who involved themselves in forms of ecstatic worship in reverence of Dionysus. An ecstatic ritual performed by the cult included the orgeia, a forest rite involving ecstatic dance during the night. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus, as well as the phallic processions. These processions often featured villagers parading through the streets with large phallic representations. The cult of Dionysus traces back to at least Mycenaean Greece, since his name is found on Mycenean Linear B tablets as 𐀇𐀺𐀝𐀰 (di-wo-nu-so). However, many view Thrace and Phrygia as the birthplace of Dionysus, and therefore the concepts and rites attributed to his worship. Dionysian worship was especially fervent in Thrace and parts of Greece that were previously inhabited by Thracians, such as Phocis and Boeotia. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism. It is possible that water divination was an important aspect of worship within the cult.

The cult was strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni, and its characteristic symbols were the bull, the serpent, tigers/leopards, ivy, and wine. One reason for Dionysus's association with the silent is that Silenus, a chief figure among them, was said to have taught Dionysus the art of wine-making. Dionysus himself is often shown riding a leopard, wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by panthers, and is also recognized by his iconic thyrsus. Besides the grapevine and its clashing alter-ego, the poisonous ivy plant, both sacred to him, the fig was another one of his accredited symbols. Additionally, the pinecone that topped his thyrsus linked him to Cybele, an Anatolian goddess. The Dionysian effect the god had on women also bores a resemblance to Krishna, an Indian god who enchanted female gopis with music to venture into the forest in the night.

Martius or mensis Martius ("March") was the first month of the ancient Roman year until possibly as late as 153 BC. After that time, it was the third month, following Februarius (February) and preceding Aprilis (April). Martius was one of the few Roman months named for a deity, Mars, who was regarded as an ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus.

March marked a return to the active life of farming, military campaigning, and sailing. It was densely packed with religious observances dating from the earliest period of Roman history. Because of its original position as the first month, a number of festivals originally associated with the new year occurred in March. In the Imperial period, March was also a time for public celebration of syncretic or international deities whose cultus was spread throughout the empire, including Isis and Cybele.

A national personification is an anthropomorphic personification of a state or the people(s) it inhabits. It may appear in political cartoons and propaganda. In the first personifications in the Western World, warrior deities or figures symbolizing wisdom were used (for example the goddess Athena in ancient Greece), to indicate the strength and power of the nation. Some personifications in the Western world often took the Latin name of the ancient Roman province. Examples of this type include Britannia, Germania, Hibernia, Hispania, Lusitania, Helvetia and Polonia.

Examples of personifications of the Goddess of Liberty include Marianne, the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), and many examples of United States coinage. Another ancient model was Roma, a female deity who personified the city of Rome and her dominion over the territories of the Roman Empire. Roma was probably favoured by Rome's high-status Imperial representatives abroad, rather than the Roman populace at large. In Rome, the Emperor Hadrian built and dedicated a gigantic temple to her as Roma Aeterna ("Eternal Rome"), and to Venus Felix, ("Venus the Bringer of Good Fortune"), emphasising the sacred, universal and eternal nature of the empire. Examples of representations of the everyman or citizenry in addition to the nation itself are Deutscher Michel, John Bull and Uncle Sam.

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida in Crete, and Mount Ida in the ancient Troad region of western Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey), which was also known as the Phrygian Ida in classical antiquity and is mentioned in the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil. Both are associated with the mother goddess in the deepest layers of pre-Greek myth, in that Mount Ida in Anatolia was sacred to Cybele, who is sometimes called Mater Idaea ("Idaean Mother"), while Rhea, often identified with Cybele, put the infant Zeus to nurse with Amaltheia at Mount Ida in Crete. Thereafter, his birthplace was sacred to Zeus, the king and father of Greek gods and goddesses.

The Castle of Mytilene, also Fortress of Mytilene, is located in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, North Aegean. It is maintained in good condition and is one of the largest castles in the Mediterranean covering an area of 60 acres. The first castle on the site may have been erected during the time of Justinian I (ruled 527–565). The 6th-century castle may have been built on top of an already existent fortress. In the Late Middle Ages, the castle was the residence of Francesco I Gattilusio and his successors, especially the tower known today as the Queen's Tower. There is also strong evidence that the original acropolis on the site may have included a sanctuary to Demeter, Kore and Cybele.

The Megalesia, Megalensia, or Megalenses Ludi was a festival celebrated in ancient Rome from April 4 to April 10, in honour of Cybele, whom the Romans called Magna Mater ("Great Mother"). The name of the festival derives from Greek megalē (μϵγάλη), meaning "great". The festival was one of several on the Roman calendar celebrated with ludi, games and performances.