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Skira
The festival of the Skira ( grc, Σκίρα) or Skirophoria ( grc, Σκιροφόρια) in the calendar of ancient Athens, closely associated with the Thesmophoria, marked the dissolution of the old year in May/June. Description At Athens, the last month of the year was '' Skirophorion'', after the festival. Its most prominent feature was the procession that led out of Athens to a place called Skiron near Eleusis, in which the priestess of Athena, the priest of Poseidon, and in later times, the priest of Helios, took part, under a ceremonial canopy called the ''skiron'', which was held up by the ''Eteoboutadai''. Their joint temple on the Acropolis was the Erechtheum, where Poseidon embodied as Erechtheus remained a numinous presence. At Skiron there was a sanctuary dedicated to Demeter/Kore and one to Athena. As a festival of dissolution, the Skira was a festival proverbial for license, in which men played dice games, but a time also of daytime fasting, and of the in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenian Festivals
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 Herakles. Other Athenian festivals were based around family, citizenship, sacrifice and women. There were at least 120 festival days each year. Athena The Panathenaea ( grc, Παναθήναια, "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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erechtheus
Erechtheus (; grc, Ἐρεχθεύς) in Greek mythology was the name of an archaic king of Athens, the founder of the ''polis'' and, in his role as god, attached to Poseidon, as "Poseidon Erechtheus". The mythic Erechtheus and the historical Erechtheus were fused into one character in Euripides' lost tragedy ''Erechtheus'' (423–22 BC). The name Erichthonius is carried by a son of Erechtheus, but Plutarch conflated the two names in the myth of the begetting of Erechtheus. Erechtheus I ''See main article: Erichthonius'' Athenians thought of themselves as ''Erechtheidai'', the "sons of Erechtheus". In Homer's ''Iliad'' (2. 547–48) Erechteus is the son of "grain-giving Earth", reared by Athena. The earth-born son was sired by Hephaestus, whose semen Athena wiped from her thigh with a fillet of wool cast to earth, by which Gaia was made pregnant. In the contest for patronage of Athens between Poseidon and Athena, the salt spring on the Acropolis where Poseidon's trident str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helios
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Helios (; grc, , , Sun; Homeric Greek: ) is the god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") and Phaethon ("the shining"). Helios is often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky. He was a guardian of oaths and also the god of sight. Though Helios was a relatively minor deity in Classical Greece, his worship grew more prominent in late antiquity thanks to his identification with several major solar divinities of the Roman period, particularly Apollo and Sol. The Roman Emperor Julian made Helios the central divinity of his short-lived revival of traditional Roman religious practices in the 4th century AD. Helios figures prominently in several works of Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, in which he is often described as the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia and brother of t ... [...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] |
Poseidon
Poseidon (; grc-gre, Ποσειδῶν) was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses.Burkert 1985pp. 136–139 In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes. He also had the cult title "earth shaker". In the myths of isolated Arcadia he is related with Demeter and Persephone and he was venerated as a horse, however, it seems that he was originally a god of the waters.Seneca quaest. Nat. VI 6 :Nilsson Vol I p.450 He is often regarded as the tamer or father of horses, and with a strike of his trident, he created springs which are related to the word horse.Nilsson Vol I p.450 His Roman equivalent is Neptune. Poseidon was the protector of seafarers, and of many Hellenic cities and colonies. Homer and Hesiod suggest that Poseidon became lord of the sea when, following the overthrow of his father Cronus, the world was divided by lot among Cronus' three sons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scirum
Scirum or Skiron ( grc, Σκίρον) or Skira (Σκίρα) was a small place in ancient Attica near a torrent of the same name, just outside the Athenian walls on the Sacred Way. It was not a demus, and derived its name from Scirus, a prophet of Dodona, who fell in the battle between the Eleusinii and Erechtheus Erechtheus (; grc, Ἐρεχθεύς) in Greek mythology was the name of an archaic king of Athens, the founder of the ''polis'' and, in his role as god, attached to Poseidon, as "Poseidon Erechtheus". The mythic Erechtheus and the historical Ere ..., and was buried in this spot. Scirum's site is unlocated. References Populated places in ancient Attica Former populated places in Greece Locations in Greek mythology Lost ancient cities and towns {{ancientAttica-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
June Observances
June is the sixth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the second of four months to have a length of 30 days, and the third of five months to have a length of less than 31 days. June contains the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the day with the most daylight hours, and the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, the day with the fewest daylight hours (excluding polar regions in both cases). June in the Northern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent to December in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. In the Northern Hemisphere, the beginning of the traditional astronomical summer is 21 June (meteorological summer begins on 1 June). In the Southern Hemisphere, meteorological winter begins on 1 June. At the start of June, the sun rises in the constellation of Taurus; at the end of June, the sun rises in the constellation of Gemini. However, due to the precession of the equinoxes, June begins with the sun in the astrological sign of ... [...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 enterta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance. A traditional die is a cube with each of its six faces marked with a different number of dots ( pips) from one to six. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing a random integer from one to six on its upper surface, with each value being equally likely. Dice may also have polyhedral or irregular shapes, may have faces marked with numerals or symbols instead of pips and may have their numbers carved out from the material of the dice instead of marked on it. Loaded dice are designed to favor some results over others for cheating or entertainment. History Dice have been used since before recorded history, and it is uncertain where they originated. It is theorized that dice developed from the pract ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
July Observances
July is the seventh month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and is the fourth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. It was named by the Roman Senate in honour of Roman general Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., it being the month of his birth. Before then it was called Quintilis, being the fifth month of the calendar that started with March. It is on average the warmest month in most of the Northern Hemisphere, where it is the second month of summer, and the coldest month in much of the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the second month of winter. The second half of the year commences in July. In the Southern Hemisphere, July is the seasonal equivalent of January in the Northern hemisphere. "Dog days" are considered to begin in early July in the Northern Hemisphere, when the hot sultry weather of summer usually starts. Spring lambs born in late winter or early spring are usually sold before 1 July. July symbols *July's birthstone is the ruby, which symboliz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men. It is used, both as a technical anthropological term for families or clans controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males and in feminist theory where it is used to describe broad social structures in which men dominate over women and children. In these theories it is often extended to a variety of manifestations in which men have social privileges over others causing exploitation or oppression, such as through male dominance of moral authority and control of property. "I shall define patriarchy as a system of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women." "There are six main patriarchal structures which together constitute a system of patriarchy. These are: a patriarchal mode of production in which women's labour is expropriated by their husbands; patriarchal relations within waged labour; the patriarchal state; male vio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecclesiazusae
''Assemblywomen'' ( grc-gre, Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι ''Ekklesiazousai''; also translated as, ''Congresswomen'', ''Women in Parliament'', ''Women in Power'', and ''A Parliament of Women'') is a comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in 391 BC. The play invents a scenario where the women of Athens assume control of the government and institute reforms that ban private wealth and enforce sexual equity for the old and unattractive. In addition to Aristophanes' political and social satire, ''Assemblywomen'' derives its comedy through sexual and scatological humor. The play aimed to criticize the Athenian government at the time.Zumbrunnen, John. "Fantasy, Irony, And Economic Justice In Aristophanes' Assemblywomen And Wealth." American Political Science Review 100.3 (2006): 319–333. International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text. Web. 25 Sept. 2016. Plot The play begins with Praxagora emerging from a house on an Athenian street before daybreak. She ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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