Bacchanalia
Bacchanaliacan be used to mean either ‘Bacchic festival’ or ‘Bacchic places of worship’, but usually translates the Greek mysteries (orgia), with special reference to the worship suppressed by the Roman authorities in 186 BC. We have an account of the suppression in Livy (39. 8–18) and an inscribed version of the senatorial decree (Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Republicae 511) against the cult, in the form in which it was circulated to the allied states of Italy. These sources can be supplemented by references in Plautus' plays and now by archaeological evidence to show that the Bacchic cult, perhaps of south-Italian Greek origin, was widespread in Italy, central and south, decades before the senate chose to act against it. The form of the Italian cult seems to differ from other Hellenistic examples in admitting men as well as women to the mysteries and in increasing the frequency of...
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