Dactyls (mythology)
In Greek mythology, the Dactyls or Daktyloi 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 Korybantes or the Cabeiri 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 Ankhiale knew her time of delivery was come, she went to the Idaean Cave on Mount Ida or, alternatively, Psychro Cave on the Lasithi Plateau. As she squatted in labor she dug her fingers into the earth, which brought forth these daktyloi Idaioi, 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.
Idaean Dactyls
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, Damnameneus, and Celmis. Of Celmis, Ovid 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 originated the Olympic Games by instigating a race among his four "finger" brothers. This Herakles was the "thumb"; his brothers were Paeonius, Epimedes, Iasius, and Idaius or Acesides.