The Dactyls of Mount Ida in
Crete 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. According to
Hesiod, they also discovered iron in Crete. Three Phrygian Dactyls, in the service of the Great Mother as Adraste (), 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.
Zenobius wrote that Celmis was turned into iron when he offended Rhea. Later Greek attempts to justify and rationalize the relationships of Dactyls,
Curetes, and Corybantes were never fully successful.
Strabo says of the mythographers: "And they suspect that both the Kouretes and the
Korybantes were offspring of the
Daktyloi Idaioi; at any rate, the first hundred men born in Crete were called Idaian Daktyloi, they say, and these were born of nine Kouretes, for each of these begot ten children who were called Idaian Daktyloi." The
Cabeiri (), whose sacred place was on the island of
Samothrace, were understood by
Diodorus Siculus to have been Idaean dactyls who had come west from Phrygia and whose magical practices had made local converts to their secret cult. An Idaean dactyl named
Herakles (perhaps the earliest embodiment of
the later hero) originated the
Olympic Games by instigating a race among his four "finger" brothers. This Herakles was the "thumb"; his brothers were
Paeonius (forefinger),
Epimedes (middle finger),
Iasius (ring finger/healing finger), and
Idaius or
Acesides (little finger). ==Rhodian Dactyls==