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The Date of Dicaeopolis' Rural Dionysia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

According to Hesychius and Theophrastus the Dionysia κατ᾿ ἀγρούς were celebrated in Poseideon. This date is confirmed by an inscription from the deme of Myrrhinous. On this evidence the festival celebrated by Dicaeopolis in The Acharnians of Aristophanes is universally placed in this month, and the ritual performed by him and his family taken as a source for the reconstruction of the ritual programme of the winter Rural Dionysia.

It is now generally recognised that there were also spring rural festivals of Dionysus in the Attic demes, festivals closely related in ritual and conception to the Athenian Anthesteria.But it seems not to have been noticed that the Dionysia κατ᾿ ἀγρούς in The Acharnians may have been one of these spring festivals.

Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1934

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References

1 .

2 Characters 3.

3 CIA. 2, 578.

4 Farnell, , Cults of the Greek States, V, 205–7Google ScholarNilsson, , Die Anthesterien und die Aiora, Eranos, XV, 181ffGoogle Scholar; Farnell, , Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality, 31, note cGoogle Scholar.

5 Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy, 296–7Google Scholar.

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