Agrionia was an ancient Greek religious festival in honor of Dionysus Agrionius. It was celebrated annually, especially at Orchomenus in Boeotia. [1]
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 began to present and solve riddles.[ citation needed ]
According to legend, the Minyades or Oleiai (Ὀλεῖαι), 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 ]
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 ]
Actaeon, in Greek mythology, was the son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, and a famous Theban hero. Through his mother he was a member of the ruling House of Cadmus. Like Achilles, in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron.
Plutarch was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus.
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.
Phidias or Pheidias was an Ancient Greek sculptor, painter, and architect, active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon, and the Athena Promachos, a colossal bronze which stood between it and the Propylaea, a monumental gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Phidias was the son of Charmides of Athens. The ancients believed that his masters were Hegias and Ageladas.
In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι, literally translates as 'raving ones'. Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae, or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin.
Boeotia, sometimes Latinized as Boiotia or Beotia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, and its largest city is Thebes.
In Greek mythology, Ariadne was a Cretan princess, the daughter of King Minos of Crete. There are different variations of Ariadne's myth, but she is known for helping Theseus escape from the Minotaur and being abandoned by him on the island of Naxos. There, Dionysus saw Ariadne sleeping, fell in love with her, and later married her. Many versions of the myth recount Dionysus throwing Ariadne's jeweled crown into the sky to create a constellation, the Corona Borealis.
Pelopidas was an important Theban statesman and general in Greece, instrumental in establishing the mid-fourth century Theban hegemony.
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The Minyades were three Orchomenian (Arcadian) princesses in Greek mythology. These sisters were protagonists of a myth about the perils of neglecting the worship of Dionysus.
Ptolemy IV Philopator was the fourth pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 221 to 204 BC.
Acca Larentia or Acca Larentina was a mythical woman, later a goddess of fertility, in Roman mythology whose festival, the Larentalia, was celebrated on December 23.
Chaeronea is a village and a former municipality in Boeotia, Greece, located about 35 kilometers east of Delphi. The settlement was formerly known as Kópraina (Κόπραινα), and renamed to Chairóneia (Χαιρώνεια) in 1916. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Livadeia, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 111.445 km2, the community is 26.995 km2. Population 993 (2021). It is located near Mount Thourion in the Cephissus river valley, NW of Thebes.
In Archaic Greece, an amphictyony, or Amphictyonic League, was an ancient religious association of tribes formed before the rise of the Greek polis.
Orchomenus, the setting for many early Greek myths, is best known today as a rich archaeological site in Boeotia, Greece, that was inhabited from the Neolithic through the Hellenistic periods. It is often referred to as "Minyan Orchomenus", to distinguish it from a later city of the same name in Arcadia.
Thargelia was one of the chief Athenian festivals in honour of the Delian Apollo and Artemis, held on their birthdays, the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion.
In ancient Roman religion, the Liberalia was the festival of Liber Pater and his consort Libera. The Romans celebrated Liberalia with sacrifices, processions, ribald and gauche songs, and masks which were hung on trees.
Haloa or Alo (Ἁλῶα) was an Attic festival, celebrated principally at Eleusis, in honour of Demeter, protector of the fruits of the earth, of Dionysus, god of the grape and of wine, and Poseidon, god of the seashore vegetation. In Greek, the word hálōs (ἅλως) from which Haloa derives means “threshing-floor” or “garden.” While the general consensus is that it was a festival related to threshing—the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain after harvest—some scholars disagree and argue that it was instead a gardening festival. Haloa focuses mainly on the “first fruits” of the harvest, partly as a grateful acknowledgement for the benefits the husbandmen received, partly as prayer that the next harvest would be plentiful. The festival was also called Thalysia or Syncomesteria.
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.
The festival calendar of Classical Athens involved the staging of many festivals each year. This includes festivals held in honor of Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, Persephone, Hermes, and Herakles. Other Athenian festivals were based around family, citizenship, sacrifice, and women. There were at least 120 festival days each year.
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