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Epidauria (festival)
The Epidauria () was an ancient religious festival held in Athens, as part of the Great Eleusinian Mysteries, commemorating the initiation of Asclepius into these sacred rites. Description According to tradition, it served as a supplementary sacrifice for those who arrived late, and it was instituted specifically for Asclepius, who himself was late to the mysteries. The celebration of the Epidauria continued into the night as an all-night vigil, known as "pannychis," as indicated by an ancient inscription found in 1876 at the Asclepieion in Athens, dating back to 136 BCE. This inscription also mentions a priest who offered his daughter as a participant in the rites ("arrephoros for the Epidauria"). Based on this event and other references to " kanephoroi" (women carrying sacred baskets), the scholar Leéhat concluded that during the festival, a sacred procession took place, starting from the Eleusinion and reaching either the Asclepieion or the sacred altar of Demeter Chloe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Athens
The city of Athens (, ''Athênai'' ; Modern Greek: Αθήναι, ''Athine'' ) during the classical period of ancient Greece (480–323 BC) was the major urban centre of the notable '' polis'' ( city-state) of the same name, located in Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Isagoras. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions, it remained in place for 180 years, until 322 BC (aftermath of Lamian War). The peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles. In the classical period, Athens was a centre for the arts, learning, and philosophy, the home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and many other prominent philosophers, writers, and politici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries () were initiations held every year for the Cult (religious practice), cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are considered the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece". Their basis was a Bronze Age Agrarianism, agrarian cult, and there is some evidence that they were derived from the religious practices of the Mycenean Greece, Mycenean period.Dietrich (1975) ''The origins of Greek Religion''. Bristol Phoenix Press pp. 166, 167Walter Burkert. (1985)''Greek Religion''. Harvard University Press. p. 285 The Mysteries represented the myth of the Persephone#Abduction myth, abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases: the ''descent'' (loss), the ''search'', and the ''ascent'', with the main theme being the ''ascent'' () of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asclepius
Asclepius (; ''Asklēpiós'' ; ) is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Religion in ancient Greece, Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology. He is the son of Apollo and Coronis (lover of Apollo), Coronis, or Arsinoe (Greek myth), Arsinoe, or of Apollo alone. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters, the "Asclepiades", are: Hygieia ("Health, Healthiness"), Iaso (from ἴασις "healing, recovering, recuperation", the goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (from ἄκεσις "healing", the goddess of the healing process), Aegle (mythology), Aegle (the goddess of good health) and Panacea (the goddess of universal remedy). He has several sons as well. He was associated with the Roman/Etruscan god Vediovis and the Egyptian Imhotep. The rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff similar to the caduceus, remains a symbol of medicine today. Those physicians and attendants who served this god were known as the Therapeutae of Asclepius. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asclepieion Of Athens
The Asclepieion of Athens was the sanctuary built in honour of the gods Asclepius and Hygieia, located west of the Theatre of Dionysos and east of the Pelasgic wall, Pelargikon wall on the southern escarpment of the Acropolis hill. It was one of several Asclepieion, asklepieia in the ancient Greek world that served as rudimentary hospitals. It was founded in the year 419–18 BCE during the Peloponnesian War, perhaps as a direct result of the Plague of Athens, plague, by Telemachos Acharneas. An account of the foundation is inscribed in the Telemachos Monument, a double-sided, marble pillar which is topped by reliefs depicting the arrival of the god in Athens from Epidaurus and his reception by Telemachos. The sanctuary complex consisted of the temple and the altar of the god as well as two galleries, the Doric stoa which served as a ''katagogion'', a space where visitors seeking healing would spend the night in the hope of seeing the god in their dreams and being healed by him, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arrephoros
An ''Arrephoros'' () was a girl acolyte in the cult of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis. They were seven to eleven years old. According to Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias,Pausanias1.27.3./ref> two ''Arrephoroi'' lived for a year on the Acropolis and concluded their term with a mystery rite called the Arrhephoria: they carried unknown objects into a cavern, and there exchanged them for other unknown objects. The lexicon of Harpocration states (s.v. Arrêphorein) that there were four ''Arrephoroi'' and that two supervised the weaving of the Panathenaic Festival, Panathenaic peplos. Notes Sources * Joan Breton Connelly, ''Portrait of a priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece'', p. 27 {{authority control Ancient Athenian religious titles Athena Ancient Greek priestesses Obsolete occupations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanephoros
The Kanephoros (, , pl. Kanephoroi (Greek: ); latinate plural form Canephorae; lit. "Basket Bearers") was an honorific office given to unmarried young women in ancient Greece, which involved the privilege of leading the procession to sacrifice at festivals; the highest honour was to lead the () at the Panathenaic Festival. The role was given to a virgin selected from amongst the aristocratic or Eupatrid families of Athens whose purity and youth was thought essential to ensure a successful sacrifice. Her task was to carry a basket or ''kanoun'' (), which contained the offering of barley or first fruits, the sacrificial knife and fillets to decorate the bull, in procession through the city up to the altar on the acropolis. From Aristophanes’s ''Lysistrata'' we have evidence that the office of kanephoros was the last in a sequence of religious duties that an unmarried Athenian girl might undertake; first as an ''arrephoros, arrhephoros'', later an ''aletris'', then as an ''arktos' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleusinion
Eleusinion (), also called the City Eleusinion () was a sanctuary on the lower part of the north slope of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, dedicated to Demeter and Kore (Persephone). It was the central hub of Eleusinian Mysteries within Athens and the starting point for the annual procession to Eleusis, in the northwest of Attica. Religious activity is attested in the area from the 7th century BC and construction took place throughout late Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. The sanctuary was enclosed within the new city walls built after the Herulian sack of Athens in AD 267 and it remained in use until the late fourth century AD. Only the western part of the sanctuary has been excavated, which consists of an upper area and three terraces, centring on a small temple for the hero Triptolemus, an outer ''propylon'' (gateway) and a South Stoa. A circular building in the southernmost part of the sanctuary might be a banqueting hall dedicated to Plouton and a precinct a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demeter
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility (soil), fertility of the earth. Although Demeter is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Greek underworld, Underworld. She is also called Deo ( ''Dēṓ''). In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea (mythology), Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like her other siblings except Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus. Through Zeus, she became the mother of Persephone, a fertility goddess and Dying-and-rising deity, resurrection deity. One of the most notable ''Homeric Hymns'', the ''Homeric Hymn to Demeter'', tells the story of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attic Calendar
The Attic calendar or Athenian calendar is the lunisolar calendar beginning in midsummer with the lunar month of Hekatombaion, in use in ancient Attica, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis. It is sometimes called the Greek calendar because of Athens's cultural importance, but it is only one of many ancient Greek calendars. Although relatively abundant, the evidence for the Attic calendar is still patchy and often contested. As it was well known in Athens and of little use outside Attica, no contemporary source set out to describe the system as a whole. Further, even during the well-sourced 5th and 4th centuries BC, the calendar underwent changes, not all perfectly understood. As such, any account given of it must be a tentative reconstruction. Local focus The Attic calendar was an exclusively local phenomenon, used to regulate the internal affairs of the Athenians, with little relevance to the outside world. For example, just across the border in Boeotia, the months h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persephone
In ancient Greek mythology and Ancient Greek religion, religion, Persephone ( ; , classical pronunciation: ), also called Kore ( ; ) or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the Greek underworld, underworld after her abduction by her uncle Hades, the king of the underworld, who would later take her into marriage. The myth of her abduction, her sojourn in the underworld, and her cyclical return to the surface represents her functions as the embodiment of spring and the personification of vegetation, especially grain crops, which disappear into the earth when sown, sprout from the earth in spring, and are harvested when fully grown. In Art in ancient Greece, Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a wikt:sheaf, sheaf of grain. She may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades. Persephone, as a vegetation deity, veg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Greek Encyclopedia
The ''Great Greek Encyclopedia'' (Greek language, Greek: ''Μεγάλη Ελληνική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια'') is a general knowledge Modern Greek language, Greek-language encyclopedia, printed initially between 1926 and 1934. The encyclopedia was founded in 1926 by Pavlos Drandakis (1896–1945) after the model of ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. He was helped by many well-known and qualified contributors and the result was deemed to be excellent. Iraklis Apostolidis was the editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia, while approximately 700 people contributed in the writing of the encyclopedia. Pyrsos, Pyrsos, Ltd. was commissioned with printing the encyclopedia and its printing began on March 1, 1926. It was issued approximately at the same time as another Greek encyclopedia of the time, the Eleftheroudakis Encyclopedic Dictionary. As the target group of the two encyclopedias was the same, in order to decrease the financial strain of the readers, the two encyclopedias were circ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festivals In Ancient Greece
A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
