12/14/2021
Raise a glass for Him my fellow devotees!
Today (14 December), Hemera Areos [Day of Ares - Tuesday], beginning at sundown, is the tenth day of the month of Poseideon.
“The tenth is favourable for a male to be born; but, for a girl, the four of the mid-month.”
– excerpt from Hesiod, Works and Days
On this day the Dionysia ta kat’ Agrous [Rural Dionysia], also known as the Lesser Dionysia is celebrated in honour of Dionysos.
The festival was held at Eletherai in Attika. It begins with a pompe wherein men called "phallophoroi" carried ph***ic figures and young girls called "kanephoroi" carried baskets of cakes. Along with them were the obeliaphoroi who carried loaves of bread; the skaphephoroi who carried fruits and grain offerings; the hydriaphoroi and the askophoroi who carried the jars of wine.
As this large group passed by they were joined by revellers and singers harking to the retinue of Dionysos.
While most official festivals were participated only by citizens, the Rural Dionysia was open to all including slaves and non-citizens testifying to the gift of happiness from wine and the bounty of the vineyard, which anyone may partake.
Contests were held at the conclusion of the pompe. AMong these contests were cockfights and jumping on greasy wineskins. There were also dramatic, dancing, and singing competitions, and choral competitions for dithyrambs which were led by a choregos.
As the number ten is associated by the Pythagoreans to the Kosmos, today is also a good day to honour all the Gods.
"The cosmos is, as we have seen, the only one of its kind and unique [Monad]; next we discover that it is necessary that there is the tangible and visible in it [Dyad]; next that since there is considerable separation between these things, some third thing is needed (in order to bring them together); next we find out that the middle term involves two forms, and thus we arrive at the Tetrad. This was therefore what the Pythagorean hymn to number said as well: 'that it proceeds from the inviolate abyss of the Monad, until it should arrive at the sacred Tetrad' and this gives birth to the Decad which is 'the Mother of all things'. The father of the Golden Verses also glorifies the Tetrad calling it 'the fountain of ever-flowing Nature'. For the cosmos was ordered (kosmein) by the Tetrad, which proceeded from the Monad and the Triad, and it is completed at the Decad in as much as this is inclusive of all things… the decad is the number of the world…the Pythagoreans consider the decad as adapted to the Demiurgus, and to Fate.”
– excerpt from Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus
Photograph: detail of a Paestan red-figure bell-shaped crater depicting a Thiasus (retinue of Dionysus), where the God is seen riding a panther, circa 370 BCE; The Louvre Museum, Paris
