Anthesteria
festivals in honor of Dionysus
The Anthesteria (; Ancient Greek: Ἀνθεστήρια [antʰestέːri.a]) was one of the four Athenian festivals in honor of Dionysus. It was held each year from the 11th to the 13th of the month of Anthesterion, around the time of the January or February full moon. The three days of the feast were called Pithoigia, Choës, and Chytroi.
The festival celebrated the beginning of spring, particularly the maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage, whose pithoi (storage-jars) were now ceremoniously opened. During the feast, social order was interrupted or inverted, the slaves being allowed to participate, uniting the household in ancient fashion. The Anthesteria also had aspects of a festival of the dead: either the Keres (Κῆρες) or the Carians (Κᾶρες) were entertained, freely roaming the city until they were expelled after the festival. However, the word Keres is often used to refer spirits of evil instead of the dead. A Greek proverb, employed of those who pestered for continued favors, ran "Out of doors, Keres! It is no longer Anthesteria".
Name
The name is usually connected with anthes- (ἀνθεσ-), the combining form of anthos (ἄνθος, 'flower').
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This entry incorporates text from “Anthesteria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.