Bringing Their Mother Home

Roman Multiculturalism and the Mother of the Gods

An exploration of the Magna Mater and her genderfluid cult followers in Rome

Bringing Their Mother Home examines the worship of the Greco-Phrygian goddess Cybele, known as the Magna Mater in Rome, to understand the ways that the mid- to late Roman Republic constructed and performed a multicultural, multiethnic identity. The goddess, originally worshiped in ancient Turkey, was brought by the Romans to their city in 204 BCE and renamed the Magna Mater (the Great Mother). Previous scholarship contended that the Romans feared and hated the goddess and her followers because they were foreign and gender nonconforming, but author Krishni Burns argues that the Romans embraced the Magna Mater and her genderfluid followers as they created a space for multiculturalism at a time when Rome was expanding rapidly across the Mediterranean. By importing the cult and ritually performing the Magna Mater’s blended Phrygian and Roman identity, the Roman state was able to ease the process of incorporating the eastern Mediterranean kingdoms into its hegemony.

Drawing on historical, literary, and archaeological evidence, Bringing Their Mother Home reevaluates the semiotics and practices of the Magna Mater cult as a way to perform the multicultural Roman identity and explores the political and military climate of the Mediterranean leading up to the cult's adoption in 204 BCE.

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