Canephorae
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 '' arrhephoros'', later an ''aletris'', then as an ''arktos'' (). The p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ephebos
''Ephebos'' (ἔφηβος) (often in the plural ''epheboi''), also anglicised as ''ephebe'' (plural: ''ephebes'') or archaically ''ephebus'' (plural: ''ephebi''), is a Greek term for a male adolescent, or for a social status reserved for that age, in Antiquity. History Greece Though the word ''ephebos'' can simply refer to the adolescent age of young men of training age, its main use is for the members, exclusively from that age group, of an official institution (''ephebeia'') that saw to building them into citizens, but especially to training them as soldiers, sometimes already sent into the field; the Greek city states ( ''poleis'') mainly depended (like the Roman republic before Gaius Marius' reforms of 107 BC) on its militia of citizens for defense. In the time of Aristotle (384–322 BC), Athens engraved the names of the enrolled ephebi on a bronze pillar (formerly on wooden tablets) in front of the council-chamber. After admission to the college, the ephebus ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ancient Greek Religion
Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic. The ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in the modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer known to us classifies either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of the Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs." Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses—Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus—although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a single transcendent deity. The worship of these deities, and several others, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chalceia
The Chalkeia festival (also spelled Chalceia), the festival of Bronze-workers, was a religious festival devoted to the goddess Athena and the god Hephaestus. It was celebrated on the last day of Pyanepsion (October or November in the Attic calendar). The festival celebrated Athena and Hephaestus, in honor of both gods as patron deities of Athens, and as deities of handicrafts.Erika Simon, Festivals of Attica, pg. 38-39, University of Wisconsin Press. 1983 Each year, preparations were begun for a specialized peplos (a robed garment worn by Greek women), which was made to be offered to the goddess at another festival, the Panathenaea. Traditions Though Hephaestus was involved, the festival's main focus was Athena, specifically under the epithet Athena Hephaistia and Athena Ergane. The offerings recorded for each day were always for Athena, not her male counterpart. Also, the main focus of the festival (the sacred peplos) was for Athena, while Hephaestus wasn't given any gifts. 'At ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arsinoe II
Arsinoë II ( grc-koi, Ἀρσινόη, 316 BC – unknown date between July 270 and 260 BC) was a Ptolemaic queen and co-regent of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of ancient Egypt. She was given the Egyptian title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt", making her pharaoh as well. Arsinoe was Queen of Thrace, Anatolia, and Macedonia by marriage to King Lysimachus. She became co-ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom upon her marriage to her brother, Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Life Early life Arsinoë was the first daughter of Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter, founder of the Hellenistic state of Egypt, and his second wife Berenice I of Egypt. She was maybe born in Memphis, but was raised in the new city of Alexandria, where her father moved his capital. Nothing is known of her childhood or education, but judging from her later life as patron of scholars and noted for her learning, she is estimated to have been given a high education. Her brothers were tutored by intellectuals hired by their fathers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parthenon Frieze
The Parthenon frieze is the high-relief Pentelic marble sculpture created to adorn the upper part of the Parthenon’s naos. It was sculpted between c. 443 and 437 BC, most likely under the direction of Pheidias. Of the 160 meters (524 ft) of the original frieze, 128 meters (420 ft) survives—some 80 percent. The rest is known only from the drawings attributed to French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674, thirteen years before the Venetian bombardment that ruined the temple. At present, the majority of the frieze is at the British Museum in London (forming the major part of the Elgin Marbles); the largest proportion of the rest is at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and the remainder of fragments shared between six other institutions. Casts of the frieze may be found in the Beazley archive at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, at the Spurlock Museum in Urbana, in the Skulpturhalle at Basel and elsewhere. Construction Plutarch’s ''Life of Pericles'', 13.4–9, informs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Makron (vase Painter)
Makron was an ancient Greek vase painter active in Athens ca. 490–480 BC. Though only one signed example of his work is known to have survived, some 350 vases have been attributed to him by Sir John Beazley, making him one of the best surviving painters of the red-figure period.The Getty Museum - Biography of Makron "He specialized in the decoration of cups, but occasionally worked with other types of vessels. Most of his vases depict scenes from daily life: revelry, athletics, or erotica." Unlike many other vase painters of this period, Makron does not seem to have worked with a variety of potters, moving from workshop to workshop. Instead, he appears to have had a steady collaboration with the potter Hieron. Strongly associated with Hieron, Beazley attributes all but three va ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kylix (drinking Cup)
In the pottery of ancient Greece, a kylix ( , ; grc, κύλιξ, pl. κύλικες; also spelled cylix; pl.: kylikes , ) is the most common type of wine-drinking cup. It has a broad, relatively shallow, body raised on a stem from a foot and usually two horizontal handles disposed symmetrically. The main alternative wine-cup shape was the ''kantharos'', with a narrower and deeper cup and high vertical handles. The almost flat interior circle of the base of the cup, called the tondo, was generally the primary surface for painted decoration in the black-figure or red-figure pottery styles of the 6th and 5th century BC, and the outside was also often painted. As the representations would be covered with wine, the scenes would only be revealed in stages as the wine was drained. They were often designed with this in mind, with scenes created so that they would surprise or titillate the drinker as they were revealed. Etymology The word comes from the Greek ''kylix'' ("cup"), ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parthenon
The Parthenon (; grc, Παρθενών, , ; ell, Παρθενώνας, , ) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization. The Parthenon was built in thanksgiving for the Hellenic victory over Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also served as the city treasury. Construction started in 447 BC when the Delian League was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438; work on the decoration continued until 432. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the 6th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest in the mid-fifteenth century ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anemoi
In ancient Greek religion and myth, the Anemoi (Greek: , 'Winds') were wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction from which their respective winds came (see Classical compass winds), and were each associated with various seasons and weather conditions. They were the progeny of the goddess of the dawn Eos and her husband Astraeus. Etymology The earliest attestation of the word in Greek and of the worship of the winds by the Greeks, are perhaps the Mycenaean Greek word-forms , , , , i.e. 'priestess of the winds'. These words, written in Linear B, are found on the KN Fp 1 and KN Fp 13 tablets. Mythology The Anemoi are minor gods and are subject to the god Aeolus. They were sometimes represented as gusts of wind, and at other times were personified as winged men. They were also sometimes depicted as horses kept in the stables of the storm god Aeolus, who provided Odysseus with the Anemoi in the ''Odyssey''. The Spartans were reported to sacrifice a horse to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |