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Zagreus (beetle)
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Zagreus ( grc-gre, Ζαγρεύς) was a god sometimes identified with an Orphic Dionysus, a son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered by the Titans and reborn. In the earliest mention of Zagreus, he is paired with Gaia and called the "highest" god, though perhaps only in reference to the gods of the underworld. Aeschylus, however, links Zagreus with Hades, possibly as Hades' son, or as Hades himself. Noting "Hades' identity as Zeus' ''katachthonios'' alter ego", Timothy Gantz postulated that Zagreus, originally the son of Hades and Persephone, later merged with the Orphic Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Etymology and origins According to Martin Litchfield West, the "most plausible etymology" derives "Zagreus" from ''zagre'', which is "properly a pit for catching animals, but perhaps also one used for depositing animal remains or offerings to a chthonic deity", making Zagreus literally the "god of pitfalls". Based on thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1929 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle. It has been used by scholars of the Hebrew Bible to clarify Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed ways in which the cultures of ancient Israel and Judah found parallels in the neighboring cultures. Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform". Corpus The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC. Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the ''Legend of Keret'', the legends of Danel, the ''Myth of Baal-Aliyan'', and the ''Death of Baal''. The latter two are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists.Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93 Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis, a Dacian province on the Black Sea, where he remained a decade until his death. Overview A contemporary of the older poets Virgil and Horace, Ovid was the first major Roman poet to begin his career during Augustus's reign. Collectively, they are considered the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian described Ovid as the last of the Latin love elegists.Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93 He enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, but the emperor Augus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sparagmos
''Sparagmos'' ( grc, σπαραγμός, from σπαράσσω ''sparasso'', "tear, rend, pull to pieces") is an act of rending, tearing apart, or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context. In Dionysian rite as represented in myth and literature, a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, is sacrificed by being dismembered. ''Sparagmos'' was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries. Examples of ''sparagmos'' appear in Euripides's play ''The Bacchae''. In one scene guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, after King Pentheus has banned the worship of Dionysus, the god lures him into a forest, to be torn limb from limb by Maenads, including his own mother Agave. According to some myths, Orpheus, regarded as a prophet of Orphic or Bacchic religion, died when he was disme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysiaca
The ''Dionysiaca'' {{IPAc-en, ˌ, d, aɪ, ., ə, ., n, ᵻ, ˈ, z, aɪ, ., ə, ., k, ə ( grc-gre, Διονυσιακά, ''Dionysiaká'') is an ancient Greek epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from Greco-Roman antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters, the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his triumphant return to the west. Composition The poem is thought to have been written in the 5th century AD. The suggestion that it is incomplete misses the significance of the birth of Dionysus' one son (Iacchus) in the final Book 48, quite apart from the fact that 48 is a key number as the number of books in the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' combined. The older view that Nonnus wrote this poem before conversion to Christianity and the writing of his other long poem, a verse paraphrase of St John's Gospel, is now discredited, since a host of indications p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonnus
Nonnus of Panopolis ( grc-gre, Νόννος ὁ Πανοπολίτης, ''Nónnos ho Panopolítēs'', 5th century CE) was the most notable Greek epic poet of the Imperial Roman era. He was a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in the Egyptian Thebaid and probably lived in the 5th century CE. He is known as the composer of the ''Dionysiaca'', an epic tale of the god Dionysus, and of the ''Metabole'', a paraphrase of the ''Gospel of John''. The epic Dionysiaca describes the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his triumphant return. It was written in Homeric Greek and in dactylic hexameter, and it consists of 48 books at 20,426 lines. Life There is almost no evidence for the life of Nonnus. It is known that he was a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in Upper Egypt from his naming in manuscripts and the reference in epigram 9.198 of the ''Palatine Anthology''. Scholars have generally dated him from the end of the 4th to the central years of the 5th century CE. He must have lived af ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fabulae
Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on mythology; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy". ''Fabulae'' The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on mythology; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy". ''Fabulae'' The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ; 1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, between 60 and 30 BC. The history is arranged in three parts. The first covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically, describing regions around the world from Egypt, India and Arabia to Europe. The second covers the time from the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great. The third covers the period to about 60 BC. ''Bibliotheca'', meaning 'library', acknowledges that he was drawing on the work of many other authors. Life According to his own work, he was born in Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira). With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about his life and doings beyond his written works. Only Jerome, in his ''Chronicon'' under the "year of Abraham 1968" (49 BC), w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semele
Semele (; Ancient Greek: Σεμέλη ), in Greek mythology, was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia (Greek goddess), Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths. Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians. These were modified, expanded, and elaborated by the Ionian Greeks, Greek invaders and colonists. Dorians, Doric Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), born in the city of Halicarnassus under the Achaemenid Empire, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived either 1,000 or 1,600 years prior to his visit to Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre in 450 BC at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC) or around 2050 or 1450 BC. In Rome, the goddess #Semele in Roman culture, Stimula was identified as Semele. Etymology According to some linguists the name Semele is Thracians, Thraco-Phrygians, Phrygian, derived from a PIE root meaning 'earth' (''*Dʰéǵʰōm''). Julius Pokorny reconstructs her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaziantep Zeugma Museum Dionysos Triumf Mosaic 1921
Gaziantep (), previously and still informally called Aintab or Antep (), is a major city and capital of the Gaziantep Province, in the westernmost part of Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region and partially in the Mediterranean Region, approximately east of Adana and north of Aleppo, Syria. It is thought to be located on the site of ancient Antiochia ad Taurum, and is near ancient Zeugma. As of the 31/12/2021 last estimation, the Metropolitan Province was home to 2,130,432 inhabitants, of whom 1,775,904 lived in the metropolitan area made of two (out of three) urban districts of Şahinbey and Şehitkamil, as Oğuzeli is not conurbated. It is the sixth-most populous city in Turkey. Name Due to the city's contact with many ethnic groups and cultures throughout its history, the name of the city has many variants and alternatives, such as: *''Hantab'', ''Hamtab'', or ''Hatab'' as known by the Crusaders. *''Antab'' and its variants in vulgar Turkish and Armenian since 17th century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korybantes
According to Greek mythology, the Korybantes or Corybantes (also Corybants) (; grc-gre, Κορύβαντες) were the armed and crested dancers who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. They are also called the ''Kurbantes'' in Phrygia. Etymology The name ''Korybantes'' is of uncertain etymology. Edzard Johan Furnée and R. S. P. Beekes have suggested a Pre-Greek origin. Others refer the name to *κορυβή (''korybé''), the Macedonian version of κορυφή (''koryphé'') "crown, top, mountain peak", explaining their association with mountains, particularly Olympus. Family The Korybantes were the offspring of Apollo and the Muse Thalia or Rhytia (Rhetia).Strabo, ''Geographica'10.3.19 One account attests the parentage to Zeus and the Muse Calliope, or of Helios and Athena, or lastly, of Cronus. Cretan counterparts The Kuretes or Kouretes () (see ''Ecstatics'' below) were nine dancers who venerated Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybele. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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