TOWN FESTIVITIES
THE EXAMPLE OF ATHENIAN ANTHESTERIAS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36661/2448-1092.2011v8n13.12703Keywords:
Feast, Religion, Dionysus, Procession, Joy, Fear, Death, Time of origins, Time of mythAbstract
Always religious, feast transformed periodically the Greek city. It was in the name of Dionysus that the Athenian Anthesteries, a feast of spring and renewal, were celebrated. During three days, people cheerfully enjoyed wine and fearfully honored their deads. From rural origin, the Anthesteries united Athenians with their Gods through the wedding of Dionysus and the wife of the archont-king. They abrogated the distance between the living and the dead and apparently subverted the social order. The Anthesteries involved the different components of Athenian space. Perpetuating rituals coming from the theocratic past of the city, they stressed the religious dimension of the democracy which characterized it from now on, broke with the rythms of daily life, revived the time of origins and the time of myth. All the components of modern urban feast were already present.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
CIDADES is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The journal will not promote any form of remuneration for copyright and authors, when submitting their texts, confirm knowledge about their disclosure in open access. Likewise, CIDADES will not charge authors any publication or review fees. The authors are the copyright holders of the texts published in the journal.
