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117-635: The Proto-Slavic root * navь- , which forms one of the names for these beings, means "dead", as these minor goddesses are conceived as the spirits of dead children or young women. They are represented as half-naked beautiful girls with long hair, but in the South Slavic tradition also as birds who soar in the depths of the skies. They live in waters, woods and steppes, and they giggle, sing, play music and clap their hands. They are so beautiful that they bewitch young men and might bring them to death by drawing them into deep water. Navia , spelled in various ways in

234-622: A "holy week" in March developed for ceremonies of the Magna Mater ("Great Mother", also known as Mater Deum , "Mother of the Gods," or Cybele ) and Attis. A preliminary festival on March 15 marked the discovery by shepherds or Cybele of the infant Attis among the reeds of a Phrygian river. The continuous ceremonies recommenced March 22 with the Arbor intrat ("The Tree enters") and lasted through March 27 or 28. For

351-577: A collegium at Rome, and as a burial society for members. Inscriptions from Acmonia , in Phrygia , show the Rosalia in the context of the religious pluralism of the Roman Empire. In 95 AD, a bequest was made for a burial society to ensure the annual commemoration of an individual named Titus Praxias. In addition to a graveside communal meal and cash gifts to members, 12 denarii were to be allocated for adorning

468-497: A Rosalia—whether intended for performance at the actual occasion, or only using the occasion as a fictional setting—take the "lament for Adonis" as their theme. Shared language for the Roman festival of Rosalia and the floral aspects of the Adoneia may indicate similar or comparable practices, and not necessarily direct assimilation. From the reign of Claudius to that of Antoninus Pius ,

585-452: A beautiful youth, both Aphrodite and Persephone—representing the realms of love and death—claimed him. Zeus decreed that Adonis would spend a third of the year with the heavenly Aphrodite , a third with chthonic Persephone, and a third on the mortal plane. The theme is similar to Persephone's own year divided between her underworld husband and the world above. For J.G. Frazer , Adonis was an archetypal vegetative god, and H.J. Rose saw in

702-432: A birthday, marriage, or other anniversary of the emperor or his family). The three-day Rosalia was among the occasions observed by a group of hymnodes, a male choir organized for celebrating Imperial cult, as recorded in a Greek inscription on an early 2nd-century altar. The eukosmos , the officer of "good order" who presided over the group for a year, was to provide one mina (a monetary unit) and one loaf for celebrating

819-577: A boar during a hunt, his blood produced a flower. A central myth of the Roman rites of Cybele is the self-castration of her consort Attis , from whose blood a violet-colored flower sprang. In the Gnostic text On the Origin of the World , possibly dating to the early 4th century, the rose was the first flower to come into being, created from the virgin blood of Psyche ("Soul") after she united sexually with Eros. In

936-442: A disguise, but when he learned who she really was, his rage transformed her human identity and she became the fragrance-producing myrrh tree . The vegetative nature of Adonis is expressed in his birth from the tree. In one tradition, Aphrodite took the infant, hid him in a box ( larnax , a word often referring to chests for ash or other human remains), and gave him to the underworld goddess Persephone to nurture. When he grew into

1053-439: A distinction between two pitch accents, traditionally called "acute" and "circumflex" accent. The acute accent was pronounced with rising intonation, while the circumflex accent had a falling intonation. Short vowels (*e *o *ь *ъ) had no pitch distinction, and were always pronounced with falling intonation. Unaccented (unstressed) vowels never had tonal distinctions, but could still have length distinctions. These rules are similar to

1170-451: A funerary context can allude to festive banqueting, since Roman families met at burial sites on several occasions throughout the year for libations and a shared meal that celebrated both the cherished memory of the beloved dead and the continuity of life through the family line. In Roman tomb painting, red roses often spill bountifully onto light ground. These ageless flowers created a perpetual Rosalia and are an expression of Roman beliefs in

1287-715: A late-period variant, representing the late 9th-century dialect spoken around Thessaloniki ( Solun ) in Macedonia , is attested in Old Church Slavonic manuscripts. Proto-Slavic is descended from the Proto-Balto-Slavic branch of the Proto-Indo-European language family, which is the ancestor of the Baltic languages , e.g. Lithuanian and Latvian . Proto-Slavic gradually evolved into the various Slavic languages during

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1404-541: A macron above the letter, while in the latter it is not clearly indicated. The following table explains these differences: For consistency, all discussions of words in Early Slavic and before (the boundary corresponding roughly to the monophthongization of diphthongs , and the Slavic second palatalization ) use the common Balto-Slavic notation of vowels. Discussions of Middle and Late Common Slavic, as well as later dialects, use

1521-611: A model for civic organizations. A form of Dionysia dating to pre- democratic Athens was the Anthesteria, a festival name some scholars derive from Greek anthos , "flower, blossom", as did the Greeks themselves, connecting it to the blossoming grapevine. In the 6th century AD, the Byzantine antiquarian Joannes Lydus related the festival name to Anthousa , which he said was the Greek equivalent of

1638-462: A new ascent to the gods." The garlands and rejoicing ( Hilaria ) occurred on March 25, the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar , when Attis was in some sense "reborn" or renewed. Some early Christian sources associate this day with the resurrection of Jesus , and Damascius saw it as a "liberation from Hades ". After a day of rest (Requietio), the ritual cleansing (Lavatio) of the Magna Mater

1755-486: A part of Roman weddings, the bridegroom was more likely than the bride to wear a flower crown; Statius (1st century AD) describes a groom as wearing a wreath of roses, violets, and lilies . When the emperor made a formal arrival ( adventus ) at a city, garlands of flowers might be among the gestures of greeting from the welcome delegation. According to an account in the Historia Augusta ("presumably fictional"),

1872-454: A preliminary to becoming galli , the eunuch priests of Cybele. Attis was placed in his "tomb" for the Sacred Night that followed. According to Sallustius , the cutting of the tree was accompanied by fasting , "as though we were cutting off the further progress of generation; after this we are fed on milk as though being reborn; that is followed by rejoicings and garlands and as it were

1989-640: A religious character; or symposium , in this sense a drinking and social club. In Thessalonica , a priestess of a thiasos bequeathed a tract of grapevines to pay for rose wreaths. If the Dionysian thiasos disbanded or failed in its duties, the property was to pass to a society of Dryophoroi ("Oak-Bearers"), or finally to the state. In addition to associations of initiates into the mysteries of Dionysus , inscriptions in Macedonia and Thrace record bequests for rose-adornment to thiasoi of Diana (Artemis) and of

2106-459: A significant Greek-speaking Jewish community , and an inscription dating from the period 215–295 records similar arrangements made for a Jewish woman by her husband. It provides for an annual rose-adornment of the tomb by a legally constituted neighborhood or community association, with the solemn injunction "and if they do not deck it with roses each year, they will have to reckon with the justice of God." The formula "he will have to reckon with God"

2223-403: A snare, replacing the waters of Agdistis's favorite spring ( fons ) with pure wine. Necessity in time drives the thirsty Agdistis to drink, veins sucking up the torpor-inducing liquid. The trap is sprung: a noose, woven from hair, suspends Agdistis by the genitals, and the struggle to break free causes a self-castration. From the blood springs a pomegranate tree, its fruit so enticing that Nana ,

2340-566: A special attribute of Aphrodite, and also of Dionysus , particularly in Imperial-era poetry as a wine god for drinking parties or with the presence of Eros ("Love, Desire"). The Greek romance novel Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD) describes a pleasure garden , with roses and violets among its abundant flora, centered on a sacred space for Dionysus. At Rome Venus was a goddess of gardens as well as love and beauty. Venus received roses at her ritual cleansing (lavatio) on April 1 and at

2457-486: A water spirit – forest ones existed too, and they appeared as more mature than their water counterparts (they also had black hair instead of golden). They were worshipped together with ancestors during the Rosalia (or Rusalye ) festival in spring, originally a Roman festival for offering roses (and other flowers) to gods and ancestors; from the festival derives the term rusalka itself. Another time associated with

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2574-451: Is believed to be separated from the world of the living either by a sea or a river located deep underground. In the folk beliefs of Ruthenia , Veles lives in a swamp located at the centre of Nav, sitting on a golden throne at the base of the world tree , and wielding a sword. Symbolically, the Nav is also described as a huge green plain–pasture, onto which Veles guides the souls. The entrance to Nav

2691-486: Is characterized as infamis , disreputable and socially marginalizing. The Phrygian king Midas , wishing to redeem the boy (puer) , arranges a marriage with his daughter, and locks down the city. The Mater Deum , however, know Attis's fate (fatum) : that he will be preserved from harm only if he avoids the bonds of marriage. Both the Mother of the Gods and Agdistis crash the party, and Agdistis spreads frenzy and madness among

2808-481: Is described by Philostratus (d. ca. 250 AD) as wearing a wreath of roses and a red or purple cloak as he encounters Ariadne, whose sleep is a kind of death from which she is awakened and transformed by the god's love. The crown that symbolized Ariadne's immortal union with Dionysus underwent metamorphosis into a constellation , the Corona Borealis ; in some sources, the corona was a diadem of jewels, but for

2925-467: Is discovered and reared by a goatherd . This child is Attis. The exceptionally beautiful Attis grows up favored by the Mother of the Gods and by Agdistis, who is his constant companion. Under the influence of wine, Attis reveals that his accomplishments as a hunter are owing to divine favor—an explanation for why wine is religiously prohibited ( nefas ) in his sanctuary and considered a pollution for those who would enter. Attis's relationship with Agdistis

3042-411: Is guarded by a zmey , a dragon. According to Stanisław Urbańczyk , amongst other scholars, Navia was a general name for demons arising from the souls of tragic and premature deaths, the killers and the killed, warlocks, and the drowned. They were said to be hostile and unfavourable towards the living, being jealous of life. In Bulgarian folklore there exists the character of twelve Navias who suck

3159-479: Is hidden beneath the earth, yet produces fine fruits, and is an ally of the power in the blossom symbolized by Attis, and of the cutting of the ripened corn symbolized by Adonis. Roses and violets are typically among the flower species that populate the meadow from which Persephone was abducted as Pluto 's bride. The comparative mythologist Mircea Eliade saw divine metamorphosis as a "flowing of life" between vegetal and human existence. When violent death interrupts

3276-574: Is obscure. His female counterparts the Silvanae , primarily found in the Danubian provinces , are sometimes depicted carrying flower pots or wreaths. Through his epithet Dendrophorus , "Tree-bearer," he was linked to the Romanized cult of Attis and Cybele in which celebrants called dendrophori participated. When well-to-do people wrote a will and made end-of-life preparations, they might set aside funds for

3393-473: Is slight dialectal variation. It also covers Late Common Slavic when there are significant developments that are shared (more or less) identically among all Slavic languages. Two different and conflicting systems for denoting vowels are commonly in use in Indo-European and Balto-Slavic linguistics on the one hand, and Slavic linguistics on the other. In the first, vowel length is consistently distinguished with

3510-484: Is the unattested , reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages . It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th century AD . As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages . Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during

3627-467: Is to be honored: ... as the chamber of the purple-robed Horai is opened, the nectar-bearing flowers bring in the sweet-smelling spring. Then, then, upon the immortal earth are cast the lovely tresses of violets, and roses fitted to hair and voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipes and choruses come to Semele of the circling headband. Dionysus was an equalizing figure of the democratic polis whose band of initiates (thiasos) provided

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3744-490: Is typically regarded as a deity of the woods and the wild, Vergil describes him as bearing flowering fennel and lilies. In other inscriptions, three donors to Silvanus had adopted the cultic name Anthus (Greek anthos , "flower") and a fourth, of less certain reading, may have the Latin name Florus , the masculine form of Flora . Since trees are the form of plant life most often emblematic of Silvanus, his connection with flowers

3861-551: Is uncertain because of the fragmentary text, but coincided with the period of the Lemuria , archaic festival days on May 9, 11, and 13 for propitiating shades ( lemures or larvae) of those whose untimely death left them wandering the earth instead of passing into the underworld. The ceremonies of the Lemuria, in the vivid description of Ovid , featured the spitting of black beans as an especially potent apotropaic gesture. The second of

3978-432: The Adoneia with ceremonial lamentation and dirges , sometimes in the presence of an effigy of the dead youth that might be placed on a couch , perfumed, and adorned with greenery. As part of the festival, they planted " gardens of Adonis ", container-grown annuals from "seeds planted in shallow soil, which sprang up quickly and withered quickly", compressing the cycle of life and death. The festival, often nocturnal,

4095-469: The Italian peninsula , three from Macedonia , and four from Thrace , Illyria , and Pannonia . Six Greek inscriptions come from Bithynia , three from Macedonia, and one each from Bulgaria , Scythia , Mysia , Phrygia , Lydia , Asia and Arcadia . At Pergamon , Rosalia seems to have been a three-day festival May 24–26, beginning with an "Augustan day" ( dies Augusti , a day of Imperial cult marking

4212-593: The Roman calendar were set aside as public holidays or memorial days devoted to the dead. As a religious expression, a rosatio might also be offered to the cult statue of a deity or to other revered objects. In May, the Roman army celebrated the Rosaliae signorum , rose festivals at which they adorned the military standards with garlands . The rose festivals of private associations and clubs are documented by at least forty-one inscriptions in Latin and sixteen in Greek, where

4329-528: The Rosaliae signorum occurred on May 31 , the day before the Kalends of June . The feast day of June 1, devoted to the tenebrous Dea Carna ("Flesh Goddess" or "Food Goddess") and commonly called the " Bean Kalends " (Kalendae Fabariae) , may have pertained to rites of the dead and like the days of the Lemuria was marked on the calendar as nefastus , a time when normal activities were religiously prohibited. In

4446-402: The Slavic languages , refers to the souls of the dead. Navka and Mavka (pl. Navki and Mavki ) are variations with the diminutive suffix - ka . They are also known as Lalka (pl. Lalki ). The Proto-Slavic root * navь- , means "dead", "deceased" or "corpse". The word Nav is also the name of the underworld , Vyraj , which is presided by the chthonic god Veles . The world of the dead

4563-548: The cult of the saints . In Greece and Rome, wreaths and garlands of flowers and greenery were worn by both men and women for festive occasions. Garlands of roses and violets, combined or singly, adorn erotic scenes, bridal processions, and drinking parties in Greek lyric poetry from the Archaic period onward. In Latin literature , to be "in the roses and violets" meant experiencing carefree pleasure. Floral wreaths and garlands "mark

4680-485: The violet[-adornment] "). As a commemoration of the dead, the rosatio developed from the custom of placing flowers at burial sites. It was among the extensive private religious practices by means of which the Romans cared for their dead, reflecting the value placed on tradition ( mos maiorum , "the way of the ancestors"), family lineage , and memorials ranging from simple inscriptions to grand public works. Several dates on

4797-455: The 19th to the 21st centuries, a profusion of cut and cultivated flowers was still a characteristic of Italian cemeteries to a degree that distinguished them from Anglo-American practice. This difference is one of the Roman Catholic practices criticized by some Protestants , especially in the 19th century, as too "pagan" in origin. Although the rose had a long tradition in funerary art,

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4914-457: The 4th-century poem Cupid Crucified by the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius , the god Cupid (the Roman equivalent of Eros) is tortured in the underworld by goddesses disappointed in love, and the blood from his wounds causes roses to grow. In Egyptian religion , funerary wreaths of laurel, palm , feathers, papyrus , or precious metals represented the " crown of justification " that the deceased

5031-463: The Latin Flora . The three-day festival, which took place at the threshold between winter and spring, involved themes of liminality and "opening up", but despite its importance in early Athens, many aspects elude certainty. It was primarily a celebration of opening the new wine from the previous fall's vintage. On the first day, "Dionysus" entered borne by a wheeled "ship" in a public procession, and

5148-519: The Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain

5265-552: The Proto-Slavic/Common Slavic time of linguistic unity roughly into three periods: Authorities differ as to which periods should be included in Proto-Slavic and in Common Slavic. The language described in this article generally reflects the middle period, usually termed Late Proto-Slavic (sometimes Middle Common Slavic ) and often dated to around the 7th to 8th centuries. This language remains largely unattested, but

5382-495: The Roman dramatist Seneca and others it was a garland of roses. In the Astronomica of Manilius (1st century AD), Ariadne's crown is bejeweled with purple and red flowers—violets, hyacinths, poppies, and "the flower of the blooming rose, made red by blood"—and exerts a positive astrological influence on cultivating flower gardens, weaving garlands, and distilling perfume. Dionysian scenes were common on Roman sarcophagi , and

5499-494: The Roman period. A late 1st- or 2nd-century statue of Attis from Athens has him with a basket containing pomegranates, pine cones, and a nosegay of violets. Perceived connections with older spring festivals that involved roses helped spread and popularize the Rosalia, and the private dies violae or violaris of the Romans was enhanced by the public prominence of Arbor intrat ceremonies. The conceptual link between Attis and Adonis

5616-488: The Romans. In Greece, roses appear on funerary steles , and in epitaphs most often of girls. In Imperial-era Greek epitaphs, the death of an unmarried girl is compared to a budding rose cut down in spring; a young woman buried in her wedding clothes is "like a rose in a garden"; an eight-year-old boy is like the rose that is "the beautiful flower of the Erotes " ("Loves" or Cupids). As a symbol of both blooming youth and mourning,

5733-470: The Rosalia as such dates to the Roman period. Although ivy and grapevines are the regular vegetative attributes of Dionysus , at Athens roses and violets could be adornments for Dionysian feasts . In a fragment from a dithyramb praising Dionysus, the poet Pindar (5th century BC) sets a floral scene generated by the opening up of the Seasons ( Horae ) , a time when Semele , the mortal mother of Dionysus,

5850-482: The Rosalia on the Augustan day, which was the first day of the month called Panemos on the local calendar. On the second of Panemos, the group's priest provided wine, a table setting, one mina , and three loaves for the Rosalia. The grammateus , a secretary or administrator, was responsible for a mina , a table setting worth one denarius , and one loaf for the third day of Rosalia. The group seems to have functioned like

5967-509: The Rosalia were assimilated into Bacchic festivals of the dead by the Roman military, particularly in Macedonia and Thrace. A Greek inscription of 138 AD records a donation for rose-adornment (rhodismos) to the council in Histria , in modern Dobruja , an area settled by the Thracian Bessi , who were especially devoted to Dionysus. Macedonia was famed for its roses, but nearly all evidence for

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6084-576: The Rusalkas is the green week (or Rusalnaya nedelja , "week of the Rusalkas") in early June; a common feature of this celebration was the ritual banishment or burial of the Rusalka at the end of the week, which remained popular in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine until the 1930s. Vila (pl. Vily ) are another type of minor goddesses, already identified as Nymphs by the Greek historian Procopius ; their name comes from

6201-564: The Slavic notation. For Middle and Late Common Slavic, the following marks are used to indicate tone and length distinctions on vowels, based on the standard notation in Serbo-Croatian : There are multiple competing systems used to indicate prosody in different Balto-Slavic languages. The most important for this article are: The following is an overview of the phonemes that are reconstructible for Middle Common Slavic. Middle Common Slavic had

6318-470: The South Slavic languages, as well as Czech and Slovak, tended to preserve the syllabic sonorants, but in the Lechitic languages (such as Polish) and Bulgarian, they fell apart again into vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel combinations. In East Slavic, the liquid diphthongs in *ь or *ъ may have likewise become syllabic sonorants, but if so, the change was soon reversed, suggesting that it may never have happened in

6435-448: The accent (moved it to the preceding syllable). This occurred at a time when the Slavic-speaking area was already dialectally differentiated, and usually syllables with the acute and/or circumflex accent were shortened around the same time. Hence it is unclear whether there was ever a period in any dialect when there were three phonemically distinct pitch accents on long vowels. Nevertheless, taken together, these changes significantly altered

6552-452: The accent was free and thus phonemic; it could occur on any syllable and its placement was inherently a part of the word. The accent could also be either mobile or fixed, meaning that inflected forms of a word could have the accent on different syllables depending on the ending, or always on the same syllable. Common Slavic vowels also had a pitch accent . In Middle Common Slavic, all accented long vowels, nasal vowels and liquid diphthongs had

6669-617: The beginning of the syllable. By the beginning of the Late Common Slavic period, all or nearly all syllables had become open as a result of developments in the liquid diphthongs . Syllables with liquid diphthongs beginning with *o or *e had been converted into open syllables, for example *TorT became *TroT, *TraT or *ToroT in the various daughter languages. The main exception are the Northern Lechitic languages ( Kashubian , extinct Slovincian and Polabian ) only with lengthening of

6786-410: The bitterness of death. She then takes the pine tree to her sacred cave, and Agdistis joins her in mourning, begging Jupiter to restore Attis to life. This he cannot permit; but fate allows the body to never decay, the hair to keep growing, and the little finger to live and to wave in perpetual motion. Arnobius explicitly states that the rituals performed in honor of Attis in his day reenact aspects of

6903-582: The blood out of women giving birth, whereas in the Primary Chronicle the Navias are presented as a demonic personification of the 1092 plague in Polotsk . According to folk beliefs, Navias may take the form of birds. According to Vladimir Propp , Rusalka (pl. Rusalki ) was an appellation used by the early Slavs for tutelary deities of water who favour fertility, and they were not considered evil entities before

7020-427: The college honored the dead. The College of Aesculapius and Hygia at Rome celebrated a Violet Day on March 22 and a Rose Day May 11, and these flower festivals are frequent among the occasions observed by dining clubs and burial societies. Most evidence for the Rosalia comes from Cisalpine Gaul ( northern Italy ), where twenty-four Latin inscriptions referring to it have been found. Ten Latin inscriptions come from

7137-467: The convivial guests. In a detail that appears only in a vexed passage in the Christian source, the daughter of a concubine to a man named Gallus cuts off her breasts. Raging like a bacchant , Attis then throws himself under a pine tree, and cuts off his genitals as an offering to Agdistis. He bleeds to death, and from the flux of blood is born a violet flower. The Mother of the Gods wraps the genitals "in

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7254-465: The creative potential of life, it is expressed "in some other form: plant, fruit, flower". Eliade related the violets of Attis and the roses and anemones of Adonis to legends of flowers appearing on battlefields after the deaths of heroes. The Roman army celebrated the Rosaliae signorum, when the military standards (signa) were adorned with roses in a supplication , on two dates in May. A.H. Hooey viewed

7371-410: The daughter of the river god Sangarius , in sinu reponit , a euphemism in Imperial-era medical and Christian writing for "placed within the vagina". Nana becomes pregnant, enraging her father. He locks her away as damaged goods, and starves her. She is kept alive by fruits and other vegetarian food provided by the Mother of the Gods. When the infant is born, Sangarius orders that it be exposed , but it

7488-504: The day of Arbor intrat, the college of dendrophores ("tree-bearers") carried a pine tree to which was bound an effigy of Attis, wrapped in "woollen bandages like a corpse" and ornamented with violet wreaths. Lucretius (1st century BC) mentions roses and other unnamed flowers in the ecstatic procession of the Magna Mater for the Megalensia in April. The most vivid and complex account of how

7605-404: The decadent emperor Heliogabalus buried the guests at one of his banquets in an avalanche of rose petals. In Greek culture, the phyllobolia was the showering of a victorious athlete or bridal couple with leaves or flower petals. Classical mythology preserves a number of stories in which blood and flowers are linked in divine metamorphosis. When Adonis , beloved of Aphrodite, was killed by

7722-536: The dendrophores laid the tree to rest with noisy music that represented the Corybantes , youths who performed armed dances and in mythology served as guardians for infant gods. For the Dies Sanguinis ("Day of Blood") on March 24, the devotees lacerated themselves in a frenzy of mourning, spattering the effigy with the blood craved as "nourishment" by the dead. Some followers may have castrated themselves on this day, as

7839-426: The dish gardens, were transformed for the funeral or destroyed as offerings: the garlanded couch became the lying-in bier ( prothesis ) . The iconography of Aphrodite and Adonis as a couple is often hard to distinguish in Greek art from that of Dionysus and Ariadne. In contrast to Greek depictions of the couple enjoying the luxury and delight of love, Roman paintings and sarcophagi almost always frame their love at

7956-463: The distribution of the pitch accents and vowel length, to the point that by the end of the Late Common Slavic period almost any vowel could be short or long, and almost any accented vowel could have falling or rising pitch. Most syllables in Middle Common Slavic were open . The only closed syllables were those that ended in a liquid (*l or *r), forming liquid diphthongs, and in such syllables,

8073-425: The divine justice of his own God , and chose to participate in the customs of the community while adapting them in ways "acceptable to his Jewish faith". In Imperial-era Macedonia , several inscriptions mention the Rosalia as a commemorative festival funded by bequests to groups such as a vicianus , a village or neighborhood association (from vicus ); thiasos , a legally constituted association, often having

8190-475: The earliest record of a Roman rose festival named as such dates to the reign of Domitian (81–96 AD), and places the observance on June 20. The inscription was made by a priestly association ( collegium ) in Lucania devoted to the woodland god Silvanus . It records vows for the wellbeing of the emperor and prescribes a sacrifice to Silvanus on five occasions in the year, among them the Rosalia. Although Silvanus

8307-664: The early twentieth century, with offerings of fruits and flowers in caves, cakes near wells, and ribbons hanged to the branches of trees. Proto-Slavic Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl. , PS. ; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic )

8424-516: The first grapevine, which in turn produces the transformative substance of wine for human use. The rites of Adonis ( Adoneia ) also came to be regarded as a Rosalia in the Imperial era. In one version of the myth, blood from Aphrodite's foot, pricked by a thorn, dyes the flowers produced from the body of Adonis when he is killed by the boar. In the Lament for Adonis attributed to Bion (2nd century BC),

8541-552: The first place. Rosalia (festival) In the Roman Empire , Rosalia or Rosaria was a festival of roses celebrated on various dates, primarily in May , but scattered through mid-July. The observance is sometimes called a rosatio ("rose-adornment") or the dies rosationis , "day of rose-adornment," and could be celebrated also with violets (violatio , an adorning with violets, also dies violae or dies violationis , "day of

8658-479: The following vowel system ( IPA symbol where different): The columns marked "central" and "back" may alternatively be interpreted as "back unrounded" and "back rounded" respectively, but rounding of back vowels was distinctive only between the vowels *y and *u. The other back vowels had optional non-distinctive rounding. The vowels described as "short" and "long" were simultaneously distinguished by length and quality in Middle Common Slavic, although some authors prefer

8775-412: The form of beautiful girls, with long hair, generally naked but covered with their long tresses, with wreaths of sedge on their heads. They live in groups in crystal palaces at the bottom of rivers, emerging only in springtime; others live in fields and forests. In springtime, they dance and sing along the riverbanks promoting the growth of rye. After the first thunder, they return to their rivers or rise to

8892-462: The form of pots of grains and seeds. Although the identity of the shades is unclear, typically the restless dead are those who died prematurely. The priestess of Thessalonica who bequeathed a tract of vineyard for the maintenance of her memory required each Dionysian initiate who attended to wear a rose wreath. In a Dionysian context, wine, roses, and the color red are trappings of violence and funerals as well as amorous pursuits and revelry. Dionysus

9009-433: The garment of the dead" and covers them with earth, an aspect of the myth attested in ritual by inscriptions regarding the sacrificial treatment of animal scrota . The would-be bride, whose name is Violet (Greek Ia) , covers Attis's chest with woollen bands, and after mourning with Agdistis kills herself. Her dying blood is changed into purple violets. The tears of the Mother of the Gods become an almond tree, which signifies

9126-442: The high rate of infant mortality in the ancient world. Children between the age of three and four received a small jug (chous) specially decorated with scenes of children playing at adult activities. The chous itself is sometimes depicted on the vessel, adorned with a wreath. The following year, the child was given a ceremonial taste of wine from his chous . These vessels are often found in children's graves, accompanying them to

9243-450: The latter half of the first millennium AD, concurrent with the explosive growth of the Slavic-speaking area. There is no scholarly consensus concerning either the number of stages involved in the development of the language (its periodization ) or the terms used to describe them. One division is made up of three periods: Another division is made up of four periods: This article considers primarily Middle Common Slavic, noting when there

9360-599: The least in Russian and the most in Czech. Palatalized consonants never developed in Southwest Slavic (modern Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian), and the merger of *ľ *ň *ř with *l *n *r did not happen before front vowels (although Serbian and Croatian later merged *ř with *r). As in its ancestors, Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European, one syllable of each Common Slavic word was accented (carried more prominence). The placement of

9477-573: The little-attested Thracian god or hero Sourogethes, and to a gravediggers ' guild. The gravediggers were to kindle a tombside fire each year for the Rosalia, and other contexts suggest that the wreaths themselves might be burnt as offerings. A distinctive collocation that occurs a few times in Macedonian commemoration is an inscription prescribing the Rosalia accompanied by a relief of the Thracian Horseman . Some scholars think that customs of

9594-569: The maintenance of their memory and care (cura) after death, including rose-adornment. One epitaph records a man's provision for four annual observances in his honor: on the Parentalia , an official festival for honoring the dead February 13; his birthday ( dies natalis ); and a Rosaria and Violaria . Guilds and associations (collegia) often provided funeral benefits for members, and some were formed specifically for that purpose. Benefactors might fund communal meals and rose-days at which members of

9711-456: The military rose festival as incorporating traditional spring festivals of vegetative deities. The festival is noted in the Feriale Duranum , a papyrus calendar for a cohort stationed at Dura-Europos during the reign of Severus Alexander (224–235 AD). The calendar is thought to represent a standard religious calendar issued to the military. The day of the earlier of the two Rosaliae

9828-553: The moment of loss, with the death of Adonis in Aphrodite's arms posing the question of resurrection . At Madaba , an Imperial city of the Province of Arabia in present-day Jordan , a series of mythological mosaics has a scene of Aphrodite and Adonis enthroned, attended by six Erotes and three Charites ("Graces"). A basket of overturned roses near them has been seen as referring to the Rosalia. In late antiquity , literary works set at

9945-454: The myth as he has told it, much of which developed only in the Imperial period, in particular the conflict and intersections with Dionysian cult. For the Arbor intrat on March 22, the dendrophores carried the violet-wreathed tree of Attis to the Temple of the Magna Mater. As a dies violae , the day of Arbor intrat recalled the scattering of violets onto graves for the Parentalia . The next day

10062-733: The nineteenth century. They came out of the water in spring to transfer life-giving moisture to the fields, thus nurturing the crops. In nineteenth-century descriptions, however, the Rusalka became an unquiet, dangerous, unclean spirit ( Nav ). According to Dmitry Zelenin , young women, who either committed suicide by drowning due to an unhappy marriage (they might have been jilted by their lovers or abused and harassed by their much older husbands) or who were violently drowned against their will (especially after becoming pregnant with unwanted children), must live out their designated time on earth as Rusalkas. Original Slavic lore suggests that not all Rusalkas were linked with death from water. They appear in

10179-487: The observance is often called a rhodismos . Flowers were traditional symbols of rejuvenation, rebirth, and memory, with the red and purple of roses and violets felt to evoke the color of blood as a form of propitiation. Their blooming period framed the season of spring, with roses the last of the flowers to bloom and violets the earliest. As part of both festive and funerary banquets, roses adorned "a strange repast ... of life and death together, considered as two aspects of

10296-565: The persistence of love in the face of death may be embodied by attendant Cupids or Erotes. In Vergil's Aeneid , purple flowers are strewn with the pouring of Bacchic libations during the funeral rites the hero Aeneas conducts for his dead father. In the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (late 4th–early 5th century AD), Dionysus mourns the death of the beautiful youth Ampelos by covering the body with flowers—roses, lilies, anemones —and infusing it with ambrosia . The dead boy's metamorphosis creates

10413-414: The preceding vowel had to be short. Consonant clusters were permitted, but only at the beginning of a syllable. Such a cluster was syllabified with the cluster entirely in the following syllable, contrary to the syllabification rules that are known to apply to most languages. For example, *bogatьstvo "wealth" was divided into syllables as * bo-ga-tь-stvo , with the whole cluster * -stv- at

10530-543: The protagonist Lucius is transformed into an ass, and after a journey of redemption returns to human form by eating roses and becoming an initiate into the mysteries of Isis . A festival called the Rhodophoria, preserved in three Greek papyri, is the "rose-bearing" probably for Isis, or may be the Greek name for the Rosalia. Roses had funerary significance in Greece, but were particularly associated with death and entombment among

10647-411: The red-to-purple color range of roses and violets particularly as flowers of death. In ancient etymology, purpureus was thought related to Greek porphyreos in the sense of suffusing the skin with purple blood in bruising or wounding. The Augustan epic poet Vergil uses the metaphor of a purple flower to describe the premature, bloody deaths of young men in battle: The death of Pallas evokes both

10764-470: The restrictions that apply to the pitch accent in Slovene . In the Late Common Slavic period, several sound changes occurred. Long vowels bearing the acute (long rising) accent were usually shortened, resulting in a short rising intonation. Some short vowels were lengthened, creating new long falling vowels. A third type of pitch accent developed, known as the "neoacute", as a result of sound laws that retracted

10881-536: The rites of Adonis "the outlines of an Oriental myth of the Great Mother and of her lover who dies as the vegetation dies, but comes back to life again." Robert A. Segal analyzed the death of Adonis as the failure of the " eternal child " ( puer ) to complete his rite of passage into the adult life of the city-state , and thus as a cautionary tale involving the social violations of "incest, murder, license, possessiveness, celibacy, and childlessness". Women performed

10998-551: The rose often marks a death experienced as untimely or premature. In the Iliad , Aphrodite anoints Hector 's corpse with " ambrosial oil of roses " to maintain the integrity of his body against abuse in death. In Greek and Latin poetry, roses grow in the blessed afterlife of the Elysian Fields . Bloodless sacrifice to the dead could include rose garlands and violets as well as libations of wine, and Latin purpureus expressed

11115-475: The same endless, unknown process." In some areas of the Empire, the Rosalia was assimilated to floral elements of spring festivals for Dionysus , Adonis and others, but rose-adornment as a practice was not strictly tied to the cultivation of particular deities, and thus lent itself to Jewish and Christian commemoration. Early Christian writers transferred the imagery of garlands and crowns of roses and violets to

11232-455: The same root as the name of Veles. They are described as beautiful, eternally young, dressed in white, with eyes flashing like thunders, and provided with wings. They live in the clouds, in mountain woods or in the waters. They are well-disposed towards men, and they are able to turn themselves into horses, wolves, snakes, falcons and swans. The cult of the Vilas was still practised among South Slavs in

11349-645: The skies. According to Polish folklore, they appeared on new moon and lured young men to play with them, killing them with tickles or frenzied dancing. Sometimes they would ask a riddle, and, if given the right answer, they would leave the man alone. They were particularly mean towards young girls. In some regions they were called majka (pl. majki ); in the Tatra Mountains – dziwożona . Other names used to describe this spirit were: water maiden, moriana and wodiana (the last one became topielica later). A rusalka wasn't necessarily

11466-611: The soul's continued existence. The bones or ashes of the deceased may be imagined as generating flowers, as in one Latin epitaph that reads: Here lies Optatus, a child ennobled by devotion: I pray that his ashes may be violets and roses, and I ask that the Earth, who is his mother now , be light upon him, for the boy's life was a burden to no one. Roses were planted at some tombs and mausoleums , and adjacent grounds might be cultivated as gardens to grow roses for adornment or even produce to sell for cemetery upkeep or administrative costs. In

11583-460: The syllable and no metathesis (*TarT, e.g. PSl. gordъ > Kashubian gard ; > Polabian * gard > gord ). In West Slavic and South Slavic, liquid diphthongs beginning with *ь or *ъ had likewise been converted into open syllables by converting the following liquid into a syllabic sonorant (palatal or non-palatal according to whether *ь or *ъ preceded respectively). This left no closed syllables at all in these languages. Most of

11700-406: The tears of Aphrodite match the blood shed by Adonis drop by drop, and the blood and tears become flowers upon the ground. Of the blood comes the rose, and of the tears the windflower . According to myth, Adonis was born from the incestuous union of Myrrha and her father. The delusional lust was a punishment from Aphrodite, whom Myrrha had slighted. The girl deceived her father with darkness and

11817-491: The terms "lax" and "tense" instead. Many modern Slavic languages have since lost all length distinctions. Vowel length evolved as follows: In § Grammar below, additional distinctions are made in the reconstructed vowels: Middle Common Slavic had the following consonants (IPA symbols where different): The phonetic value (IPA symbol) of most consonants is the same as their traditional spelling. Some notes and exceptions: In most dialects, non-distinctive palatalization

11934-549: The tomb with roses. The obligations of membership were both legally and religiously binding: the society had its own tutelary deities who were invoked to oversee and ensure the carrying out of the deceased's wishes. These were Theos Sebastos (= Divus Augustus in Latin), Zeus under the local and unique epithet Stodmenos , Asclepius the Savior (Roman Aesculapius, as in the collegium above), and Artemis of Ephesus . Acmonia also had

12051-447: The traditional definition of a proto-language as the latest reconstructable common ancestor of a language group, with no dialectal differentiation. (This would necessitate treating all pan-Slavic changes after the 6th century or so as part of the separate histories of the various daughter languages.) Instead, Slavicists typically handle the entire period of dialectally differentiated linguistic unity as Common Slavic . One can divide

12168-457: The underworld after a premature death. The Anthesteria has also been compared with the Roman Lemuria , with the second day a vulnerable time when the barrier between the world of the living and the dead became permeable, and the shades of the dead could wander the earth. On the third day, the ghosts were driven from the city, and Hermes Chthonios ("Underworld Hermes ") received sacrifices in

12285-423: The violet of Attis and the hyacinth generated from the dying blood of Apollo 's beloved Hyacinthus . Claudian writes of the "bloody splendor" of roses in the meadow from which Proserpina will be abducted to the underworld, with hyacinths and violets contributing to the lush flora. Roses and the ominous presence of thorns may intimate bloodshed and mortality even in the discourse of love. Conversely, roses in

12402-694: The violet was created out of violence in the Attis myth is given by the Christian apologist Arnobius (d. ca. 330), whose version best reflects cult practice in the Roman Imperial period. The story begins with a rock in Phrygia named Agdus , from which had come the stones transformed to humans by Pyrrha and Deucalion to repopulate the world after the Flood . The Great Mother of the Gods customarily rested there, and there she

12519-406: The wearers as celebrants and likely serve as an expression of the beauty and brevity of life itself." Roses and violets were the most popular flowers at Rome for wreaths, which were sometimes given as gifts. Flowers were associated with or offered to some deities, particularly the goddesses Aphrodite (Roman Venus ), Persephone ( Proserpina ), and Chloris ( Flora ). Roses and fragrances are

12636-441: The wine festival ( Vinalia ) celebrated in her honor April 23. A lavish display of flowers was an expression of conviviality and liberal generosity. An Imperial-era business letter surviving on papyrus attempts to soothe a bridegroom 's mother upset that the rose harvest was insufficient to fill her order for the wedding; the suppliers compensated by sending 4,000 narcissus instead of the 2,000 she requested. While flowers were

12753-417: Was assailed by the lustful Jupiter . Unable to achieve his aim, the king of gods relieved himself by masturbating on the rock, from which was born Acdestis or Agdistis , a violent and supremely powerful hermaphroditic deity. After deliberations, the gods assign the cura of this audacity to Liber , the Roman god identified with Dionysus: cura means variously "care, concern, cure, oversight." Liber sets

12870-497: Was carried out on March 27. March 28 may have been a day of initiation into the mysteries of the Magna Mater and Attis at the Vaticanum . Although scholars have become less inclined to view Attis within the rigid schema of "dying and rising vegetation god", the vegetal cycle remains integral to the funerary nature of his rites. The pine tree and pine cones were introduced to the iconography of Attis for their cult significance during

12987-418: Was developed primarily in the later Imperial period. The Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry (d. ca. 305 AD) saw both Adonis and Attis as aspects of the "fruits of the earth": Attis is the symbol of the blossoms which appear early in the spring, and fall off before the complete fertilization; whence they further attributed castration to him, from the fruits not having attained to seminal perfection: but Adonis

13104-400: Was not a part of the official state calendar of holidays, and as a private rite seems like the Rosalia to have had no fixed date. Although the celebration varied from place to place, it generally had two phases: joyful revelry like a marriage feast in celebration of the love between Aphrodite and Adonis, and ritual mourning for his death. Decorations and ritual trappings for the feast, including

13221-576: Was probably present on all consonants that occurred before front vowels. When the high front yer *ь/ĭ was lost in many words, it left this palatalization as a "residue", which then became distinctive, producing a phonemic distinction between palatalized and non-palatalized alveolars and labials. In the process, the palatal sonorants *ľ *ň *ř merged with alveolar *l *n *r before front vowels, with both becoming *lʲ *nʲ *rʲ. Subsequently, some palatalized consonants lost their palatalization in some environments, merging with their non-palatal counterparts. This happened

13338-495: Was taken to the private chamber of the king's wife for a ritual union with her; the precise ceremonies are unknown, but may be related to the myth of Ariadne , who became the consort of Dionysus after she was abandoned by the Athenian culture hero Theseus . In keeping with its theme of new growth and transformation, the Anthesteria was also the occasion for a rite of passage from infancy to childhood—a celebratory moment given

13455-476: Was the symbol of the cutting of the perfect fruits. Porphyry linked Attis, Adonis, Korē (Persephone as "the Maiden", influencing "dry" or grain crops), and Dionysus (who influences soft and shell fruits ) as deities of "seminal law": For Korē was carried off by Pluto , that is, the sun going down beneath the earth at seed-time; but Dionysus begins to sprout according to the conditions of the power which, while young,

13572-721: Was to receive when he was judged in the Weighing of the Heart ceremony of the afterlife . In the Imperial period , the wreath might be roses, under the influence of the Romanized cult of Isis . The statue of Isis was adorned with roses following the Navigium Isidis , an Imperial holiday March 5 when a ceremonial procession represented the "sailing" of Isis. In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius ,

13689-459: Was used only among Jews and Christians in Phrygia, and there is a slighter possibility that the inscription might be Christian. The inscription is among the evidence that Judaism was not isolated from the general religious environment of the Imperial world, since a rosatio could be made without accompanying sacrifices at the tomb. Instead of multiple deities, the Jewish husband honoring his wife invoked

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