Dactyl (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Dactyls (pronounced [ˈdæktɪlz]; from Greek Δάκτυλοι "fingers") were the archaic mythical race of male beings associated with the Great Mother, whether as Cybele or Rhea. Their numbers vary, but often they were ten spirit-men so like the three Curetes, the Cabiri or the Korybantes that they were often interchangeable. The Dactyls were both ancient smiths and healing magicians. In some myths, they are in Hephaestus' employ, and they taught metalworking, mathematics, and the alphabet to humans.

When Rhea, the mother of the gods, knew her time of delivery was come, she went to the sacred cave on Mount Ida. As she squatted in labor she dug her fingers into the earth (Gaia), which brought forth these daktyloi Idaioi (Δάκτυλοι Ἰδαῖοι "Idaean fingers"), thus often ten in number, or sometimes multiplied into a race of ten tens. Three is just as often given as their number. They are sometimes instead numbered as thirty-three.

When Greeks offered a most solemn oath, often they would press their hands against the earth as they uttered it.

The Dactyls of Mount Ida in Phrygia invented the art of working metals into usable shapes with fire;Walter Burkert surmises that, as the societies of lesser gods mirrored actual cult associations, guilds of smiths corresponded to the daktyloi in real life. They also discovered iron. Three Phrygian Dactyls, in the service of the Great Mother as Adraste (Ἀδράστη), are usually named Acmon (the anvil), Damnameneus (the hammer), and Celmis (casting). Of Celmis, Ovid (in Metamorphoses iv) made a story that when Rhea was offended at this childhood companion of Zeus, she asked Zeus to turn him to diamond-hard adamant, like a tempered blade. Zeus obliged.

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