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Ascolia
Ascolia, in Ancient Greece, was a yearly feast that the peasants of Attica celebrated in honor of Dionysus. The rites included sacrificing a goat, chosen because goats were prone to eating and destroying grapevines, and using its skin to make a football, which was filled with wine and smeared in oil. Festival participants then competed against each other by trying to leap onto it in a game that gave the festival its name (''askoliazein'', ἀσκωλιάζειν); the one who remained standing at the end of the contest won the wineskin as a prize. Participants also painted their faces with wine dregs, sang hymns, and recited satirical poetry. The Atticans also made icons of Dionysus to hang in their vineyards to turn in the wind, which were called ''aiorai'' (αἰώραι). George Spence suggested that this was due to a popular belief that the god ensured fertility of any field he faced, while Varro speculated that the icons were intended as an offering to the spirits of the dead ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans called him Bacchus ( or ; grc, Βάκχος ) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''bakkheia''. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), 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. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In Orphic religion, he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC (though this excludes a number of Greek city-states free from Alexander's jurisdiction in the western Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica). In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. 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 the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival
A festival is an event ordinarily 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 e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Spence (MP)
George Spence (1787 – 12 December 1850) was an English jurist and politician. Life The second son of Thomas Richard Spence, a surgeon of Hanover Square, London, he was educated at a private school at Richmond, Surrey, and at the University of Glasgow, where he matriculated in 1802, and graduated M.A. on 11 April 1805. After some time spent in the office of a London solicitor, he was admitted in 1806 a student at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar on 28 June 1811; he was then elected a bencher in 1835, reader in 1845, and treasurer in 1846. A pupil of the equity draughtsman John Bell, Spence rapidly acquired an extensive practice, most of which he lost on taking silk (27 December 1834). He was returned to parliament in the Tory interest for on 20 June 1826, but was unseated on petition (26 March 1827). He then (2 March 1829) secured the seat, which he retained as Member of Parliament until the dissolution of December 1832. Both in and out of parliament he made ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus. Biography Varro was born in or near Reate (now Rieti) to a family thought to be of equestrian rank, and always remained close to his roots in the area, owning a large farm in the Reatine plain, reported as near Lago di Ripasottile, until his old age. He supported Pompey, reaching the office of praetor, after having been tribune of the people, ''quaestor'' and ''curule aedile''. It is probable that Varro was discontented with the course on which Pompey entered when the First Triumvirate was formed, and he may thus have lost his chance of rising to the consulate. He actually ridiculed the coalition in a work entitled the ''Three-Headed Monster'' ( in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vinalia
The Vinalia were Roman festivals of the wine harvest, wine vintage and gardens, held in honour of Jupiter and Venus. The ''Vinalia prima'' ("first Vinalia"), also known as the ''Vinalia urbana'' ("Urban Vinalia") was held on 23 April to bless and sample last year's wine and ask for good weather until the next harvest. The ''Vinalia rustica'' ("Rustic Vinalia") was on 19 August, before the harvest and grape-pressing. Vinalia Urbana The ''Vinalia Urbana'' was held on 23 April. It was predominantly a wine festival, shared by Venus as patron of " profane" wine (''vinum spurcum'') intended for everyday human use, and Jupiter as patron of the strongest, purest, sacrificial grade wine (''temetum''). In honour of Venus, whose powers had provided humankind with ordinary wine, men and women alike sampled the ''vinum spurcum'' of the previous autumn's pressing. As god of the weather on which the wine-harvest depended, Jupiter was offered a special libation of the previous year's sacred wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demarch
The ''dēmarchos'' ( gr, δήμαρχος, 3=archon of the deme; plural δήμαρχοι, ''dēmarchoi''), anglicized as Demarch, is a title historically given to officials related to civic administration. In ancient Athens the title was given to the elected chief magistrate of each of the demes of Attica. In later literature, the term was used as a translation of the Roman office of . In the Byzantine Empire the ''dēmarchos'' was the leader of one of the racing factions (then known as "demes") of the Hippodrome of Constantinople. Largely concerned with ceremonial in the early centuries, from the 11th century the title was applied to various administrative positions in Constantinople, until the end of the empire. In modern usage, the term is used for the mayor of a municipality. Ancient Greece Athens In Classical Athens, the was the highest magistrate in each of the 139 demes (, , sing. , ) that comprised Attica after the reforms of Cleisthenes. The office lasted for one year, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deme
In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508 BC. In those reforms, enrollment in the citizen-lists of a deme became the requirement for citizenship; prior to that time, citizenship had been based on membership in a phratry, or family group. At this same time, demes were established in the main city of Athens itself, where they had not previously existed; in all, at the end of Cleisthenes' reforms, Athens was divided into 139 demes, to which one can be added Berenikidai (established in 224/223 BC), Apollonieis (201/200 BC), and Antinoeis (added in 126/127). The establishment of demes as the fundamental units of the state weakened the ''gene'', or aristocratic family groups, that had dominated t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festivals In Ancient Athens
A festival is an event ordinarily 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 entert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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