CABEIRI, ka-brri, or CABIRI, heroes i or divinities, venerated by the ancients Samo thrace, Lemnos, and in different parts of the coasts of Greece, Phoenicia and Asia Minor, as the authors of religion and the founders of the human race. The multiplicity of names ap plied to the same character, the interchange of the names of the divinities themselves with those of their priests, the oracular law which enjoined the preservation of ancient barbaric names, and thus led to a double nomenclature, sacred and profane, together with the profound secrecy of the rites, have involved the subject in great obscurity. Some have thought that the Eastern mythology and the Druidism of western Europe contain traces of the Cabeiri. Some say there were six, three male and three female, children of Vulcan and Cabira, daugh ter of Proteus. Others make two sons of Jupi ter or Bacchus. In Samothrace four were vene
rated. Recent excavations near Thebes have brought to light much information on the cult of the Cabeiri, one of whom has been identified with Demeter. The mysteries celebrated there, in the obscurity of night, were the most famous. Consult Lobeck, 'Aglaophamus) (Konigsberg 1829) ; Schomann, (Gnechische Altertiimee (Vol. II, Berlin 1894) ; Preller, 'Griechische Mythologie' (Vol. I, Berlin 1894) ; Welcker, 'Griechische Gotterlehre (Vols. I and III, Giittingen 1857-62); Lenormant, in Daremberg and Saglio, (Dictionnaire des antiquites) (Vol. I, Paris 1892) ; Rubensohn, 0., 'Die Mysterien heiligtiimer in Eleusis und Samothrake) (1892) ; Robinson,