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55-529: It was a family festival of the Athenians , at which the newly born child was introduced into the family, and children of poorer families received their names. Wealthier families held a naming ceremony for their children on the tenth day called dekate . This ceremony, unlike the Amphidromia, was open to the public by invitation. No particular day was fixed for this solemnity; but it did not take place very soon after

110-425: A family member or husband to the male domination festivals, as it would have been seen as inappropriate for an unmarried girl or married woman to go unsupervised. Non-citizen women and slaves would be present as prostitutes or workers for the male guests, but were not included in the actual festival. Select male festivals would include women in their festivities. Often it was high-born women who were allowed to attend

165-502: A military connotation, and thanks the god for his assistance to the Athenians during wars. It could also commemorate a specific intervention at the origin of the festival. The event in question, according to the ancient writers, could be the help brought to Theseus in his war against the Amazons , or the assistance provided to the king Erechtheus during his struggle against Eumolpus . During

220-607: A newly woven peplos was dedicated to Athena. The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus , the central event of which was the performance of tragedies and, from 487 BCE, comedies . It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia . The Dionysia actually comprised two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of

275-626: Is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. The Alexandrine grammarians , and most likely Aristophanes of Byzantium in particular, seem to have been the first to divide Greek comedy into what became the canonical three periods: Old Comedy ( ἀρχαία archaía ), Middle Comedy ( μέση mésē ) and New Comedy ( νέα néa ). These divisions appear to be largely arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over

330-453: Is not clearly marked chronologically, Aristophanes and others of the latest writers of the Old Comedy being sometimes regarded as the earliest Middle Comic poets. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than "later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, but earlier than Menander ". Middle Comedy is generally seen as differing from Old Comedy in three essential particulars:

385-876: 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 Propylaea . Only Athenian citizens were allowed to pass through the Propylaea and enter the Acropolis. The procession passed the Parthenon and stopped at the great altar of Athena in front of the Erechtheum . Every four years

440-844: The Eteoboutadai . Their joint temple on the Acropolis was the Erechtheum , where Poseidon embodied as Erechtheus remained a numinous presence. The Hermaea ( Ancient Greek : Ἔρμαια ) were ancient Greek festivals held annually in honour of Hermes , notably at Pheneos at the foot of Mt Cyllene in Arcadia . Usually the Hermaea honoured Hermes as patron of sport and gymnastics, often in conjunction with Heracles . They included athletic contests of various kinds and were normally held in gymnasia and palaestrae . The Athenian Hermaea were an occasion for relatively unrestrained and rowdy competitions for

495-610: The Maenads , the female worshippers of Dionysus. The Anthesteria , one of the four Athenian festivals in honour of Dionysus (collectively the Dionysia), was held annually for three days, the eleventh to thirteenth of the month of Anthesterion (the January/February full moon); it was preceded by the Lenaia. At the centre of this wine-drinking festival was the celebration of the maturing of

550-514: The Panathenaia as basket-bearers, but would not participate in the feast itself. The public festivals of Anthesteria and Dionysia , included women both in attendance and rites of sacrifice. The festival of Argive held in honor of Hera was attended by both men and women. The men and women's involvement in Argive was close to equal, as they shared rites of feasting and sacrifice. Athenian women held their own festivals that often excluded men, such as

605-761: The Proerosia , the Thargelia , the Pyanospia , the Thalysia and the Pithoigia . These offerings were made to ask for help in the production of crops and the breeding animals from Gods and Goddesses such as Demeter, Apollo, and Artemis. The offerings were more likely to happen in areas prone to frost, drought, rain and hailstorms. The offerings consisted of liquid and solid food, and was usually presented daily or at common feasts. Jon D. Mikalson in his book, The Sacred and Civil Calendar of

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660-532: The Thesmophoria , Adonia , and Skira . Festivals hosted by women were not supported by the state and instead were private festivals run and funded by wealthy women. For this reason they were often hosted inside homes and held at night. The Thesmophoria was a major women's festival held in the honour of Demeter . Women's festivals were often dedicated to a goddess and were held as a way of social, religious and personal expression for women. Wealthy women would sponsor

715-436: The birth of a child. It was a family festival of the Athenians , at which the newly born child was introduced into the family, and children of poorer families received its name. Children of wealthier families held a naming ceremony on the tenth day called dekate . This ceremony, unlike the Amphidromia, was open to the public by invitation. No particular day was fixed for this solemnity; but it did not take place very soon after

770-407: The ephebes , and Solon tried to prohibit adults from attending. The Heracleia were ancient festivals honouring the divine hero Heracles . The ancient Athenians celebrated the festival, which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August), at the Κυνοσαργες (Kynosarges) gymnasium at the demos Diomeia outside

825-519: The satyr play ). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy , Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes ; Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis ; and New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander . The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy

880-469: The Athenian Year , states "The total number of positively dated festival days (i.e., the total in the two lists) is 120, which constitutes 33 percent of the days of the year". Greek comedy Ancient Greek comedy ( Ancient Greek : κωμῳδία , romanized :  kōmōidía ) was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and

935-510: The Minoan period. Since the festival was celebrated by Athens and all the Ionian cities, it is assumed that it must have preceded the Ionian migration of the late eleventh or early tenth century BCE. The Boedromia ( Ancient Greek : Βοηδρόμια ) was an ancient Greek festival held at Athens on the 7th of Boedromion (summer) in the honour of Apollo Boedromios (the helper in distress). The festival had

990-515: The Thesmophoria, marked the dissolution of the old year in May/June. 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 and the priest of Poseidon took part, under a ceremonial canopy called the skiron , which was held up by

1045-425: The act was less focused on violence or aggression, and more focused on ritual. Women and men had very specific roles in sacrifices. Only female virgins, called kanephoroi , could lead the procession as they were required to carry the sacred implements and provisions at the sacrifices. The kanephoroi was also required to raise the ololuge , a screaming howl in which the woman would perform as the man would begin killing

1100-548: The animal. The men were the sacrificers; they would cut their hair as an offering, then butcher the animal on the altar. The animal would be skinned and then cooked over the altar for the participants to consume. Ritual sacrifice in Athens had three main steps: the preparation of the sacrifice, the distribution, and consumption of the sacrificial animal. Other forms of sacrifice took place at Athenian festivals, such as food and other items. Offerings of agricultural products took place at

1155-585: The ashes thrown into the sea (or over the land, to act as a fertilizing influence). The Adonia ( Ἀδώνια ), or Adonic feasts , were ancient feasts instituted in honour of Aphrodite and Adonis , and observed with great solemnity among the Greeks , Egyptians , etc. The festival took place in the late summer and lasted between one and eight days. The event was run by women and attended exclusively by them. All Athenian women were allowed to attend, including widows, wives and unmarried women of different social classes. On

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1210-410: The birth of the child, for it was believed that most children died before the seventh day, and the solemnity was therefore generally deferred till after that period, that there might be at least some probability of the child remaining alive. Athenian women were allowed to attend the majority of festivals, but often had limited participation in the festivities or feasts. They would have been escorted by

1265-416: The birth of the child, for it was believed that most children died before the seventh day, and the solemnity was therefore generally deferred till after that period, that there might be at least some probability of the child remaining alive. According to Suidas , the festival was held on the fifth day, when the women who had lent their assistance at the birth washed their hands, but this purification preceded

1320-467: The city. The Adonis was an event where women were allowed unusual freedom and independence, as they could socialize without constraint under their own terms. The Thesmophoria was a festival held in Greek cities, in honour of the goddesses Demeter and her daughter Persephone . The name derives from thesmoi , or laws by which men must work the land. The Thesmophoria were the most widespread festivals and

1375-459: The complications of love, sudden recognitions, ex machina endings were all established techniques which playwrights exploited and evoked. The new comedy depicted Athenian society and the social morality of the period, presenting it in attractive colors but making no attempt to criticize or improve it. In his own time, Philemon was perhaps the most successful among the New Comedy, regularly beating

1430-454: The conceited cook with his parade of culinary science. Because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or "genius". But many Middle Comic plays appear to have been revived in Sicily and Magna Graecia in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary and social influence. New Comedy followed

1485-702: The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 BC. It is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners . The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are Menander , Philemon , and Diphilus . The playwrights of the New Comedy genre built on the legacy from their predecessors, but adapted it to the portrayal of everyday life, rather than of public affairs. The satirical and farcical element which featured so strongly in Aristophanes' comedies

1540-517: The event, sacrifices were also made to Artemis Agrotera . The Thargelia ( Ancient Greek : Θαργήλια ) was one of the chief Athenian festivals in honour of the Delian Apollo and Artemis , held on their birthdays, the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion (about 24 and 25 May). Essentially an agricultural festival, the Thargelia included a purifying and expiatory ceremony. While the people offered

1595-426: The events and elect other women to preside over the festival. Common themes of festivals hosted by women were the transitioning from a girl to a woman, as well as signs of fertility. There were festivals held as a way to protest the power of the men in Athens, and empower the women in the community. The Skira was an example of a woman-only event that was held annually in the summer as an opposition to men. This festival

1650-759: The fact that the guests, whilst the name was given to the child, walked or danced around it. This festival is sometimes called from the day on which it took place. This article relating to Ancient Greek religion is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . 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. The Panathenaea ( Ancient Greek : Παναθήναια , "all-Athenian festival")

1705-614: The fears and foibles of the ordinary man, his personal relationships, family life and social mishaps rather than politics and public life. His plays were also much less satirical than preceding comedies, being marked by a gentle, urbane tone, a taste for good temper and good manners (if not necessarily for good morals). The human dimension of his characters was one of the strengths of Menander's plays, and perhaps his greatest legacy, through his use of these fairly stereotype characters to comment on human life and depict human folly and absurdity compassionately, with wit and subtlety. An example of

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1760-429: The first day, they brought into the streets statues of Adonis, which were laid out as corpses; and they observed all the rites customary at funerals, beating themselves and uttering lamentations, in imitation of the cries of Aphrodite for the death of her paramour. The second day was spent in merriment and feasting; because Adonis was allowed to return to life, and spend half of the year with Aphrodite. The Adonis festival

1815-447: The first-fruits of the earth to the god in token of thankfulness, it was at the same time necessary to propitiate him, lest he might ruin the harvest by excessive heat, possibly accompanied by pestilence. The purificatory preceded the thanksgiving service. On the 6th a sheep was sacrificed to Demeter Chloe on the Acropolis , and perhaps a swine to the Fates , but the most important ritual was

1870-469: The following: Two men, the ugliest that could be found (the Pharmakoi ) were chosen to die, one for the men, the other (according to some, a woman) for the women. On the day of the sacrifice they were led round with strings of figs on their necks, and whipped on the genitals with rods of figwood and squills. When they reached the place of sacrifice on the shore, they were stoned to death, their bodies burnt, and

1925-600: The main expression of the cult of Demeter, aside from the Eleusinian Mysteries . The Thesmophoria commemorated the third of the year when Demeter abstained from her role of goddess of the harvest and growth in mourning for her daughter who was in the realm of the Underworld . Their distinctive feature was the sacrifice of pigs. The festival of the Skira or Skirophoria in the calendar of ancient Athens, closely associated with

1980-417: The men who were sent to Ionia by the kings and were attended exclusively by the descendants of these men. In these festivals, men would present their sons to the clan to swear an oath of legitimacy. The oath was made to preserve the purity of the bloodline and their connection to the original settlers. The oath was followed by a sacrifice of either a sheep or a goat, and then the sons' names getting inscribed in

2035-612: The moral reformations he offered (not always convincingly) is Cnemon from Menander's play Dyskolos , whose objections to life suddenly fade after he was rescued from a well. The fact that this character was not necessarily closed to reason makes him a character whom people can relate to. Philemon's comedies tended to be smarter, and broader in tone, than Menander's; while Diphilus used mythology as well as everyday life in his works. The comedies of both survive only in fragments but their plays were translated and adapted by Plautus . Examples include Plautus' Asinaria and Rudens . Based on

2090-457: The most common animals were sheep, lamb, and goat. This is because they were readily available in Athens and the cost of them was minimal. Bigger sacrifices included bulls and oxen. These animals were reserved for larger festivals like Buphonia . Goats were commonly sacrificed at the festivals of Dionysus, Apotropaiso , Lykeios , and Pythois . Sacrifice in Athenian festivals was very formal, and

2145-402: The real solemnity. The friends and relations of the parents were invited to the festival of the amphidromia, which was held in the evening, and they generally appeared with presents, among which are mentioned the cuttlefish and the marine polyp . The house was decorated on the outside with olive branches if the child was a boy, or with garlands of wool if the child was a girl; and a repast

2200-455: The register. At Athens , the Apaturia , a Greek citizenship festival took place on the 11th, 12th and 13th days of the month Pyanepsion (mid-October to mid-November). At this festival, the various phratries , or clans, of Attica met to discuss their affairs, along with initiating the sons into the clans. The Amphidromia was a ceremonial feast celebrated on the fifth or seventh day after

2255-739: The rest of our knowledge of New Comedy is derived from the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence . Horace claimed Menander as a model for his own gentle brand of Roman satire . The New Comedy influenced much of Western European literature, primarily through Plautus and Terence: in particular the comic drama of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson , Congreve , and Wycherley , and, in France, Molière . The 5-act structure later to be found in modern plays can first be seen in Menander's comedies. Where in comedies of previous generations there were choral interludes, there

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2310-514: The role of the chorus was diminished to the point where it had no influence on the plot; public characters were not impersonated or personified onstage; and the objects of ridicule were general rather than personal, literary rather than political. For at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge: courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, and especially

2365-472: The stock characters of Western comedy: braggarts, the permissive father figure and the stern father ( senex iratus ), young lovers, parasites, kind-hearted prostitutes , and cunning servants. Their largely gentle comedy of manners drew on a vast array of dramatic devices, characters and situations their predecessors had developed: prologues to shape the audience's understanding of events, messengers' speeches to announce offstage action, descriptions of feasts,

2420-639: The translation and adaptation of Diphilus' comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays. The most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos ("Difficult Man, Grouch") by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958. The Cairo Codex (found in 1907) also preserves long sections of plays including Epitrepontes ("Men at Arbitration"), Samia ("The Girl from Samos"), and Perikeiromene ("The Girl who had her Hair Shorn"). Much of

2475-448: The walls of Athens, in a sanctuary dedicated to Heracles. His priests were drawn from the list of boys who were not full Athenian citizens ( nothoi ). The Apaturia ( Greek : Ἀπατούρια ) were Ancient Greek festivals held annually by all the Ionian towns, except Ephesus and Colophon who were excluded due to acts of bloodshed. The festivals honored the origins and the families of

2530-526: The wine stored at the previous vintage, whose pithoi were now ceremoniously opened, and the beginning of spring. Athenians of the Classical age were aware that the festival was of great antiquity; Walter Burkert points out that the mythic reflection of this is the Attic founder-king Theseus ' release of Ariadne to Dionysus, but this is no longer considered a dependable sign that the festival had been celebrated in

2585-550: The year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries . The Lenaia ( Ancient Greek : Λήναια ) was an annual festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place (in Athens) in the month of Gamelion , roughly corresponding to January. The festival was in honour of Dionysus Lenaius . Lenaia probably comes from lenai , another name for

2640-506: The years. The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes (born in 446 BC). His works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo , effectively define the genre today. Aristophanes lampooned the most important personalities and institutions of his day, as can be seen, for example, in his buffoonish portrayal of Socrates in The Clouds , and in his racy anti-war farce Lysistrata . He

2695-479: The younger figure of Menander in contests; but the latter would be the most highly esteemed by subsequent generations. Menander's comedies not only provided their audience with a brief respite from reality, but also gave audiences an accurate, if not greatly detailed, picture of life, leading an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa. Unlike earlier predecessors, Menander's comedies tended to centre on

2750-438: Was held annually to honor the death of Adonis, Aphrodite's mortal lover who was killed by a boar. Women would participate in the festival by planting their own gardens of Adonis inside of fractured pottery vessels to transport to the rooftops where the ceremonies took place. The women would march through the city to the sea, where Adonis was born and buried. This was preceded by wailing on the rooftops that could be heard throughout

2805-479: Was held in honor of the Goddesses Athena and Demeter, where women would eat garlic as it was linked to sexual abstinence to oppose the men in the community and their husbands. Blood sacrifices were a common occurrence in Athenian festivals. Athenians used blood sacrifices to make the accord between gods and men, and it renewed the bonds of the community. Many animals were sacrificed in Athenian festivals, but

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2860-533: Was increasingly abandoned, the de-emphasis of the grotesque—whether in the form of choruses, humour or spectacle—opening the way for greater representation of daily life and the foibles of recognisable character types. Apart from Diphilus, the New Comedians preferred the everyday world to mythological themes, coincidences to miracles or metamorphoses; and they peopled this world with a whole series of semi-realistic, if somewhat stereotypical figures, who would become

2915-408: Was one of a large number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus and Eupolis . The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as Rabelais , Cervantes , Swift , and Voltaire . In particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery. The line between Old and Middle Comedy

2970-468: Was prepared. The child was then carried round the fire by the nurse, and thus, as it were, presented to the gods of the house and to the family, and at the same time received its name, to which the guests were witnesses. The carrying of the child round the hearth was the principal part of the solemnity, from which its name was derived. But the Scholiast on Aristophanes ( Lysistr. 758) derives its name from

3025-415: 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

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