CURETES is said to mean "young men" (Gr. KovpifrEs Koi rims). (I) A people who fight the Calydonians in the quarrel arising out of the boar-hunt. (See MELEAGER.) Later writers placed them in Aetolia, Acarnania, or Chalcis. (See Homer, Iliad, ix., 529 ff.; Strabo, x., 3, I ; schol. Hom., loc. cit.) (2) Certain daimones connected with the cult of Rhea and regularly conceived as the attendant band (thiasos) of the infant Zeus. In historical times they had a certain amount of cult in various parts of the Greek world, which comprised Pyrrhic dances (i.e., war-dances in armour). In cult, art and literature they are frequently confused with the Corybantes (q.v.), but their proper home is Crete, and their proper function attendance on Zeus and his mother Rhea. Names of several of them point to these facts, as Kres (Cretan), Labrandos (he of the double axe, labrus, a very old Cretan and Asiatic sacred symbol, cf. the Carian Zeus Labrandeus). The legend states that when Zeus was born in, or conveyed in infancy to, Crete, they danced and clashed their weapons to drown his cries (see ZEus). A highly interesting hymn in their honour has been discovered at Palaik astro in Crete; the worshippers call on Zeus Kovpos and his attendants to bring all manner of fertility.
It is a not improbable supposition that the original Curetes were the human worshippers of Zf1 e Kovpos i.e., that the KOUpoL (adolescent lads) worshipped a god supposed to be of their own age, a variant of the "infant" Zeus of Crete; that the object of their worship was the increase of fertility, vegetable and animal; and that, although the hymn is of Hellenistic date, the rite itself may go back to Minoan times. (For further specula tions see Miss Harrison's Themis.) It is also possible that the Curetes who fight the Calydonians are in their origin nothing but the young warriors of the neighbouring states. The text of the hymn is best given in Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina p. 16o (1925) ; other texts are cited in Immisch.