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Lenaia
The Lenaia () was an annual Athenian festival with a dramatic competition. It was one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in Athens in Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January. The festival was in honour of Dionysus Lenaios. There is also evidence the festival also took place in Delphi. The term ''Lenaia'' probably comes from "''lenos''" 'wine-press' or from "''lenai''", another name for the Maenads (the female worshippers of Dionysus). Overview The Lenaia is depicted on numerous vases, which show both typical Maenad scenes and those of aristocrats and wine-mixing rituals. It is unknown exactly what kind of worship occurred at the festival, but it may have been in honor of Dionysus as a youth or the rebirth of Dionysus after his murder by the Titans. It may have also had some connection with the Eleusinian Mysteries, as some of the same religious officials were involved (such as the ''Archon basileus '' and the ''epimeletai''). T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving plays belong to the genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are considered its most valuable examples. Aristophanes' plays were performed at the religious festivals of Athens, mostly the City Dionysia and the Lenaia, and several of them won the first prize in their respective competitions. Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes wrote plays that often dealt with real-life figures, including Euripides and Alcibiades, and contemporary events, such as the Peloponnesian War. He has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His plays are characterized by preposterous premises, explicit language, wordplays, and political satire. His powers of ridicule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iacchus
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Iacchus (also Iacchos, Iakchos) () was a minor deity, of some cultic importance, particularly at Athens and Eleusis in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, but without any significant mythology. He perhaps originated as the personification of the ritual exclamation ''Iacche!'' cried out during the Eleusinian procession from Athens to Eleusis. He was often identified with Dionysus, perhaps because of the resemblance of the names ''Iacchus'' and ''Bacchus'', another name for Dionysus. By various accounts he was a son of Demeter (or apparently her husband), or a son of Persephone, identical with Dionysus Zagreus, or a son of Dionysus. During the Greco-Persian Wars, when the Attic countryside, deserted by the Greeks, was being laid waste by the Persians, a ghostly procession was supposed to have been seen advancing from Eleusis, crying out “Iacchus”. This miraculous event was interpreted as a sign of the eventual Greek victory at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenian Festival
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 Heracles. Other Athenian festivals were based around family, citizenship, sacrifice, and women. There were at least 120 festival days each year. Athena The Panathenaea (, "all-Athenian festival") was the most important festival for Athens and one of the grandest in the entire ancient Greek world. Except for slaves, all inhabitants of the ''polis'' could take part in the festival. This holiday of great antiquity is believed to have been the observance of Athena's birthday and honoured the goddess as the city's patron divinity, Athena Polias ('Athena of the city'). A procession assembled before dawn at the Dipylon Gate in the northern sector of the city. The procession, led by the Kanephoros, made its way to the Areopagus and in front of the Temple of Athena Nike next to the Prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, 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 ( or ; ) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Ancient Rome, Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''baccheia''. His wine, music, and ecstatic dance were considered to 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 of Dionysus, cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thrace, Thracian, others as Greek. In O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysia
The Dionysia (; Greek: Διονύσια) was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were processions and sacrifices in honor of Dionysus, the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. Rural Dionysia Origins The Dionysia was originally a rural festival in Eleutherae, Attica ( – ''Dionysia ta kat' agrous''), celebrating the cultivation of vines. Archaeological evidence suggests that theatres for the Rural Dionysia had been constructed as early as the 6th century BCE , but the festival is generally believed to have been celebrated even before that. This "rural Dionysia" was held during the winter, in the month of Poseideon (the month straddling the winter solstice, i.e., ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenaeus (other)
Lenaeus (, ''Lēnaios'') is a masculine given name related to wine presses and the Maenads, the female attendants of Dionysus and Bacchus in Greco-Roman mythology. It may refer to: * Johannes Canuti Lenaeus (1573–1669), a Swedish academic and archbishop * Lenaeus (fl. 2nd cent. BC), a Greek slave of the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra the Syrian who served as regent of Egypt * Pompeius Lenaeus (fl. 1st cent. BC), a Greek slave of the Roman general Pompey who was freed and began a school in Rome It is also used in various scientific names: * ''Lenaeus'' (bug), a genus of assassin bugs * '' Episcepsis lenaeus'', a Central American moth * '' Papilio menatius lenaeus'', a South American butterfly * ''H. lenaeus'', a South American butterfly of the genus ''Heliconius'' * ''S. lenaeus'', a beetle of the genus '' Scaraphites'' See also * Lenaia The Lenaia () was an annual Athenian festival with a dramatic competition. It was one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthesteria
The Anthesteria (; ) was one of the four Athenian festivals in honor of Dionysus. It was held each year from the 11th to the 13th of the month of Anthesterion, around the time of the January or February full moon. The three days of the feast were called , , and . The festival celebrated the beginning of spring, particularly the maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage, whose (storage-jars) were now ceremoniously opened. During the feast, social order was interrupted or inverted, the slaves being allowed to participate, uniting the household in ancient fashion. The Anthesteria also had aspects of a festival of the dead: either the Keres (mythology), Keres () or the Carians () were entertained, freely roaming the city until they were expelled after the festival. However, the word Keres is often used to refer spirits of evil instead of the dead. A Greek proverb, employed of those who pestered for continued favors, ran "Out of doors, Keres! It is no longer Anthesteria". N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dithyramb
The dithyramb (; , ''dithyrambos'') was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in '' The Laws'', while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also remarks in the ''Republic'' that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker. However, in '' The Apology'' Socrates went to the dithyrambic poets with some of their own most elaborate passages, asking their meaning, but got a response of, "Will you believe me?" which "showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them." Plutarch contrasted the dithyramb's wild and ecstatic character with the paean. According to Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of Atheni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Comedy
Ancient Greek comedy () was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece; the others being tragedy and the satyr play. Greek comedy was distinguished from tragedy by its happy endings and use of comically exaggerated character archetypes, the latter feature being the origin of the modern concept of the comedy. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods; Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven extant plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost and preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. A burlesque dramatic form that blended tragic and comic elements, known as phlyax play or hilarotragedy, developed in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia by the late 4th century BC. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his '' Poetics'' (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Of Dionysus
The Theatre of Dionysus (or Theatre of Dionysos, ) is an ancient Greek theatre in Athens. It is built on the south slope of the Acropolis hill, originally part of the sanctuary of Dionysus Eleuthereus (Dionysus the Liberator). The first ''orchestra'' terrace was constructed on the site around the mid- to late-sixth century BC, where it hosted the City Dionysia. The theatre reached its fullest extent in the fourth century BC under the '' epistates'' of Lycurgus when it would have had a capacity of up to 25,000, and was in continuous use down to the Roman period. The theatre then fell into decay in the Byzantine era and was not identified, excavated and restored to its current condition until the nineteenth century. Sanctuary and first theatre The cult of Dionysus was introduced to Attica in the Archaic period with the earliest representation of the God dating to c. 580 BC. The City Dionysia (or Great Dionysia) began sometime in the Peisistratid era. and was reorganised du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bacchanalia
The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula. Livy, writing some 200 years after the event, offers a scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, with frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes; he represents the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. Livy believed the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome's inexorable moral decay. Modern scholars take a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satyr Play
The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is strong; satyr plays were written by tragedians, and satyr plays were performed in the Dionysian festival following the performance of a group of three tragedies. The satyr play's mythological-heroic stories and the style of language are similar to that of the tragedies. Its connection with comedy is also significant – it has similar plots, titles, themes, characters, and happy endings. The remarkable feature of the satyr play is the chorus of satyrs, with their costumes that focus on the phallus, and with their language, which uses wordplay, sexual innuendos, references to breasts, farting, erections, and other references that do not occur in tragedy. As Mark Griffith points out, the satyr play was "not merely a deeply traditional Dionysi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
