Expert: Hank Hokamp - 7/3/2011

Question
Hello,

I'm currently doing a research project on some the craziest parties/celebrations/festivals that took place in ancient history. I'm mainly looking for celebrations that don't exist anymore. So celebrations that have stood the test of time and are currently celebrated today isn't the focus. I have done tones of research online and can't seem to come up with much. A few examples of what I have found are: THE CRITIC'S REVENGE Paris, 10 November 1975, NERO'S LAKE OF WINE, THE FEAST OF BEASTS Paris, 31 December 1870.

The crazier the celebration and the more drinking the better.

I know it's a weird request, but any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks again,
Sam

Answer
   Hello Sam. Good to have you back. Here's some info you can use:

   The Greek God Bacchus was the god of male fertility, wine, music and ecstatic dance.
He was held in secret and was attended by women only. Those who partake in his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself.

   His cult was a "cult of the souls"; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.
The notoriety of these festivals, where many kinds of crimes and political conspiracies were supposed to be planned.

   Think drunk, crazy, horny, dancing vampires.

   The BACCHANALIA were rites originally held in ancient Greece as the Dionysia.

   The most famous of the Greek Dionysia were in Attica and included ... a festal procession ... a drinking feast [and] dramatic performances in the theatre of Dionysus.

   The rites spread to Rome from the Greek colonies in Southern Italy; here they were secret and only attended by women. The festivals occurred in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill on March 16 and March 17. Later, admission to the rites was extended to men, and celebrations took place five times a month. According to Livy, the extension happened in an era when the leader of the Bacchus cult was Paculla Annia — though it is now believed that some men had participated before that.

   Livy informs us that the rapid spread of the cult, which he claims indulged in all kinds of crimes and political conspiracies at its nocturnal meetings, led in 186 BC to a decree of the Senate — the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, inscribed on a bronze tablet discovered in Apulia in Southern Italy (1640), now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna — by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree (Livy claims there were more executions than imprisonment), the Bacchanalia survived in Southern Italy long past the repression.

    By a woman who had been involved in the rites to a Roman investigative consul, writes:

   "There was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was committed by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the sum total of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair disheveled, rushed down to the Tiber River with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished because they were made of sulfur mixed with lime.

    Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been taken away by the gods. These were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take part in their crimes or submit to their pollution."

   Suggestions by Livy that the Romans banned the rites because women occupied leadership positions in the cult have been dismissed by Celia Schultz, thus:

    "In light of [this] view of female religious activity ... and despite the claims of Livy's narrative, it is unlikely that the gender of worshippers involved was the primary motivation behind the Senate's [banning] action.

    Also, Erich Gruen writes:

    All the leaders singled out by Livy are male. ... The severity of Rome's crack-down needs explanation beyond any menace posed by women.

    He suggests that the prohibition was a display of the Senate's supreme power to the Italian allies as well as competitors within the Roman political system, such as individual victorious generals whose popularity made them a threat to the Senate's collective authority.

                               *****************

    A symposium would be overseen by a "symposiarch" who would decide how strong the wine for the evening would be, depending on whether serious discussions or merely sensual indulgence were in the offing. The Greeks and Romans customarily served their wine mixed with water, as the drinking of pure wine was considered a habit of uncivilized peoples. The wine was drawn from a krater, a large jar designed to be carried by two men, and served from pitchers (oenochoe). Certain formalities were observed, most important among which were libations, the pouring of a small amount of wine in honour of various deities or the mourned dead.

   In a fragment from a lost play by Eubulos, the god of wine Dionysos himself describes proper and improper drinking. "For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness."

    In keeping with the Greek virtue of moderation, the symposiarch should have prevented festivities from getting out of hand, but Greek literature and art often indicate that the third-krater limit was not observed.

    Thanks for the 'goofy' question, Sam. LOL Have a great weekend, my friend.

                                                HANK