The Great Mother is the all-powerful mistress of the wild world of the mountains, venerated on sacred rocks where sacrifices and offerings where made to her. In the sanctuary of Samothrace, these altars correspond to porphyry outcroppings of various colours (red, green, blue, or grey).

For her faithful, her power also manifested itself in veins of magnetic iron, from which they fashioned rings that initiates wore as signs of recognition. A number of these rings were recovered from the tombs in the neighbouring necropolis.

Hecate, under the name of Zerynthia, and Aphrodite-Zerynthia, two important nature goddesses, are equally venerated at Samothrace, their cult having been distanced from that of the Great Mother and more closely identified with deities more familiar to the Greeks.

Kadmylos (Καδμῦλος), the spouse of Axiéros, is a fertility god identified by the Greeks as Hermes; a phallic deity whose sacred symbols were a ram's head and a baton {kerykeion}, which was obviously a phallic symbol and can be found on some currency.

Two other masculine deities accompany Kadmylos. These may correspond to the two legendary heroes who founded the Samothracean mysteries; the brothers Dardanos (Δάρδανος) and Éétion (Ηετίων). They are associated by the Greeks with the Dioscuri, divine twins popular as protectors of mariners in distress.

A pair of underworld deities, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, are identified to Hades and Persephone, but do not appear to be part of the original group of pre-Hellenic deities. The legend (familiar to the Greeks) of the rape of the goddess of fertility by the god of the underworld also plays a part in the sacred dramas celebrated at Samothrace; although less so than at Eleusis.

During a later period this same myth was associated with that of the marriage of Cadmos and Harmony, possibly due to a similarity of names to Kadmylos and Electra.

The whole of the sanctuary was open to all who wished to worship the Great Gods, although access to buildings consecrated to the mysteries was understood to be reserved for initiates.

The most common rituals were indistinguishable from practice at other Greek sanctuaries. Prayer and supplications accompanied by blood sacrifices of domestic animals {sheep and pigs} burnt in sacred hearths (ἐσχάραι / eschárai), as well as libations made to the chthonic deities in circular or rectangular ritual pits (βόθρος / bóthros). A large number of rock altars were used, the largest of which was surrounded by a monumental enclosure at the end of the 4th century BC (site number 11).

The major annual festival, which drew envoys to the island from throughout the Greek world, probably took place in mid-July. It consisted of the presentation of a sacred play, which entailed a ritual wedding (hieros gamos); this may have taken place in the building with the Dancer's Wall which was built in the 4th century BC.

Marriage of Cadmos and Harmony - Samothrace temple complex

Samothrace temple complex - Index