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That is not true of everything. What the text is describing is not arrant fantasy, and it would change and simplify the nature of the text if this were the kind of see-through spoof we encounter in Lucian’s True History. Coins and reliefs and sculpture in the round do substantiate what we are told about the goddess’s iconography. One impressive correspondence is the cultic standard or semeion (§33) (though it is the survival of plastic representations that allow us to identify what Lucian is talking about, rather than Lucian who allows us to identify surviving plastic representations). Lucian does not in the least clarify what the object was, though its role in a water-carrying festival, in connection with “Apollo” or Nebo (§§33, 36), is confirmed by a parallel account with a totally different perspective in Ps.-Meliton (below). Other details, such as the empty throne (§34) and the piloi of the priests (§42), are rendered at least plausible by iconographical or archaeological evidence from other cults. Or there are intriguing literary and epigraphic parallels with other cults – the galli of Cybele and the spring festival with its “day of blood” celebrated in imperial Rome – none of which, however, suffices to establish a bedrock from which we could ever hope to extract “solid” data from DDS.