Agrionia

Last updated November 07, 2019

Agrionia was an ancient Greek religious festival in honor of Dionysus Agrionius. It was celebrated annually, especially at Orchomenus in Boeotia.^[1]

Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedon, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. The Hellenistic period came to an end with the conquests and annexations of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, which established the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, and later the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire.

Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, also known as Hellas, is a country located in Southeast Europe. Its population is approximately 10.7 million as of 2018; Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki.

Dionysus is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre in ancient Greek religion and myth.

According to Plutarch, agrionia was celebrated at night with only women accompanied by the priests of Dionysus, who often wore black garments.^{[ citation needed ]} Women pretended to search for Dionysos and then declared that he has fled to the Muses and hidden there.^[1] After that they feasted and begun to present and solve riddles.^{[ citation needed ]}

Plutarch, later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, was a Greek biographer and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They are considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs, and myths that were related orally for centuries in these ancient cultures.

According to legend, oleaia^{[ check spelling ]}, the daughters of king Minyas of Orchomenus, who had despised the Dionysian rites, were seized with a desire to eat human flesh of one of their children.^[1] They cast lots to decide which of their children they would eat and selected Hippasus, son of Leucippe.^{[ citation needed ]}

In Greek mythology, Minyas was the founder of Orchomenus, Boeotia.

Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well-documented, both in ancient and in recent times.

Plutarch also explains that the festival included a human sacrifice. At this festival it was originally the custom for the priest of the god to pursue a woman of the Minyan family with a drawn sword and kill her.^[2] This practice was later discontinued after the occurrence of bad omens.^{[ citation needed ]}

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a ritual. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner intended to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased, for example, as a propitiatory offering or as a retainer sacrifice when a king's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting.

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References

1 2 3 Chisholm 1911.
↑ Chisholm 1911 cites Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 102, Quaest. Graecae 38.

Attribution:

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Agrionia". Encyclopædia Britannica . 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 424.

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The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–11), is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, is now in the public domain, and many of its articles have been used as a basis for articles in Wikipedia. However, the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source for modern scholarship problematic. Some articles have special value and interest to modern scholars as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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[FOOTNOTEChisholm1911-1] 1 2 3 Chisholm 1911.

[2] Chisholm 1911 cites Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 102, Quaest. Graecae 38.