Hecate is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology,most often shown holding a pair of torches,a key,or snakes,or accompanied by dogs,and in later periods depicted as three-formed or triple-bodied. She is variously associated with crossroads,night,light,magic,protection from witchcraft,the Moon,graves,and ghosts. Her earliest appearance in literature was in Hesiod's Theogony in the 8th century BCE as a goddess of great honour with domains in sky,earth,and sea. Her place of origin is debated by scholars,but she had popular followings amongst the witches of Thessaly and an important sanctuary among the Carian Greeks of Asia Minor in Lagina. Her oldest known representation was found in Selinunte,in Sicily.
In ancient Greek religion and myth,Dionysus is the god of wine-making,orchards and fruit,vegetation,fertility,festivity,insanity,ritual madness,religious ecstasy,and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus by the Greeks for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia. As Dionysus Eleutherius,his wine,music,and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care,and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His thyrsus,a fennel-stem sceptre,sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey,is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.
In the Eleusinian Mysteries,the bakchoi were the branches of initiates that carried out the procession along the Sacred Way,the twenty-one kilometer hike from Athens to Eleusis. The term is sometimes distinguished from mystai (initiate),specifically the Eleusinian initiate,only for the purpose of emphasis since the two words are considered synonymous. The bacchoi was considered a transformed state after performing initiations and this was described by Euripides in the case of his Cretans,who proclaimed they were made holy –mystai and bacchoi –after cleansing themselves through initiation.
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology,Minthe is an Underworld Naiad nymph associated with the river Cocytus. She was beloved by Hades,the King of the Underworld,and became his mistress. But she was transformed into a mint plant by either his wife Persephone or her mother Demeter. The plant was also called by some as hedyosmos,which means "sweet-smelling".
Mormo was a female spirit in Greek folklore,whose name was invoked by mothers and nurses to frighten children to keep them from misbehaving.
Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world,associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus,who descended into the Greek underworld and returned. This type of journey is called a katabasis and is the basis of several hero worships and journeys. Orphics revered Dionysus and Persephone. Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlier Dionysian religion,involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering of Hesiod's Theogony,based in part on pre-Socratic philosophy.
Sparagmos is an act of rending,tearing apart,or mangling,usually in a Dionysian context.
In Ancient Greek Religion and mythology,Enodia is a distinctly Thessalian Ancient Greek goddess,identified in certain areas or by certain ancient writers with Artemis,Hecate or Persephone. She was paired with Zeus in cult and sometimes shared sanctuaries with him. Enodia was primarily worshipped in Ancient Thessaly and was well known in Hellenistic Macedonia.
In ancient Greek religion,an orgion was an ecstatic form of worship characteristic of some mystery cults. The orgion is in particular a cult ceremony of Dionysos,celebrated widely in Arcadia,featuring "unrestrained" masked dances by torchlight and animal sacrifice by means of random slashing that evoked the god's own rending and suffering at the hands of the Titans. The orgia that explained the role of the Titans in Dionysos's dismemberment were said to have been composed by Onomacritus. Greek art and literature,as well as some patristic texts,indicate that the orgia involved snake handling.
Totenpass is a German term sometimes used for inscribed tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into Orphic,Dionysiac,and some ancient Egyptian and Semitic religions. The term may be understood in English as a "passport for the dead". The so-called Orphic gold tablets are perhaps the best-known example.
Ivan Mortimer Linforth was an American scholar,Professor of Greek at University of California,Berkeley. According to the Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists he was "one of the great Hellenists of his time". He is best known for his book The Arts of Orpheus (1941),in which he analysed a large number of sources for Orphism and Orphic literature. His work is noted for its thoroughly sceptical approach to the evidence,attempting to the repudiate the notions of a coherent Orphism put forward by earlier scholars. His conclusion was that there was no exclusively "Orphic" system of belief in Ancient Greece. His work had an impact on the scholarship of Orphism,with Eric R. Dodds writing in 1951 that due to Linforth "[t]he edifice reared by an ingenious scholarship upon these foundations remains for me a house of dreams".
Gello,in Greek mythology,is a female demon or revenant who threatens the reproductive cycle by causing infertility,miscarriage,and infant mortality. By the Byzantine era,the gelloudes (γελλούδες) were considered a class of beings. Women believed to be under demonic possession by gelloudes might stand trial or be subjected to exorcism.
In Greek mythology,Orpheus was a Thracian bard,legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned poet and,according to the legend,travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece,and even descended into the underworld of Hades,to recover his lost wife Eurydice.
In ancient Greek religion and myth,Eubuleus is a god known primarily from devotional inscriptions for mystery religions. The name appears several times in the corpus of the so-called Orphic gold tablets spelled variously,with forms including Euboulos,Eubouleos and Eubolos. It may be an epithet of the central Orphic god,Dionysus or Zagreus,or of Zeus in an unusual association with the Eleusinian Mysteries. Scholars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have begun to consider Eubuleus independently as "a major god" of the mysteries,based on his prominence in the inscriptional evidence. His depiction in art as a torchbearer suggests that his role was to lead the way back from the Underworld.
A mastos is an ancient Greek drinking vessel shaped like a woman's breast. The type is also called a parabolic cup,and has parallel examples made of glass or silver. Examples are primarily in black-figure or white ground technique,though early examples may be red-figure. A mastos typically has two handles and a "nipple" at the bottom,though some examples have a foot as a base instead. A mastoid cup is conical,but with a flat bottom,with or without handles.
The Petelia Gold Tablet or Petelia Tablet is an orphic inscription or Totenpass that was found near the ancient city of Petelia,southern Italy in the early nineteenth century. Since 1843,the original has been kept in the British Museum.
Greek divination is the divination practiced by ancient Greek culture as it is known from ancient Greek literature,supplemented by epigraphic and pictorial evidence. Divination is a traditional set of methods of consulting divinity to obtain prophecies (theopropia) about specific circumstances defined beforehand. As it is a form of compelling divinity to reveal its will by the application of method,it is,and has been since classical times,considered a type of magic. Cicero condemns it as superstition. It depends on a presumed "sympathy" between the mantic event and the real circumstance,which he denies as contrary to the laws of nature. If there were any sympathy,and the diviner could discover it,then "men may approach very near to the power of gods."
Peter T. Struck is professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-founder with Sarah Igo of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education. He sits on the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Susan Guettel Cole is Professor Emerita at the University at Buffalo in the Department of Classics. She is known for her work on Ancient Greek Religion and gender.
Carolina López-Ruiz is a Spanish classicist specializing in comparative mythology,Ancient Mediterranean religions,Greek language and literature,North-West Semitic languages and literatures,and cultural exchange. She has authored several works on the Phoenician civilization,and contacts between Greek and Near Eastern cultures.
