Or must I omit him also, for the sake of Ganymede? But Attis at all events, Zeus, and Corybas

In Icaromenippus, 27 (II, 312) a similar list of “alien gods of doubtful status’’ is given, in which, besides Pan, Attis, and Sabazius, we find the Corybantes. For Lucian’s conception of them, see the note on The Dance, 8 (p. 220, n. 2). Here only one Corybas is remarked in the sacred precincts. Does Lucian think of him as that one who was slain by the others (Clem. Alex., Protr., II, 19), and so as the central figure of the cult?

and Sabazius

Sabazius was the centre of a wide-spread and important mystery-religion, which merged with that of Dionysus (Zagreus). He is frequently represented sitting in the palm of a great hand opened in a gesture like that of benediction (thumb and first two dingo extended), see Cook’s Zeus, I, 390, Fig. 296. Multitudes of attributes always surround him, and the bull, the ram, and the snake figured in his cult. On initiation, a snake was through the clothing of the initiate, and “snake through the bosom” is said to have been the pass-word (Clem. Alex., Protr., III, 15, 1).

—how did they get trundled in upon us? Or Mithras yonder, the Mede, with his caftan and his cap, who does not even speak Greek, so that he cannot even understand if one drinks his health? The result is that the Scythians—the Getae among them—seeing all this have told us to go hang, and now confer immortality on their own account and elect as gods whomsoever they will, in the selfsame way that Zamolxis, a slave, obtained fraudulent admission to the roster, getting by with it somehow or other.

Lucian recognises that the Getae were not Scythians but Thracians in Icaromenippus, 16, and that Zamolxis belongs to the Thracians in True Story, II, 17, and Zeus Rants, 44. On the other hand, the god is styled Scythian in The Scythian, 1 and 4, and in the passage before us, though he is ascribed to the Getae, they are represented as Scythian. Perhaps these two pieces are earlier than the others, and earlier than Tozaris, where Zamolxis is not mentioned. Zamolxis obtained his ‘fraudulent registration” by hiding in a cave and not appearing for four years, according to Herodotus (IV, 95). Strabo (VII, 5), who says that he was counsellor to the king, who connived at the fraud, adds that he was followed by a continuous succession of such gods; and to these Lucian must be alluding when he speaks of their electing gods.