Bendis

A Thracian divinity in whom the moon was worshiped. Hesychius1 says, that the poet Cratinus called this goddess δίλογχος (dilonchos), either because she had to discharge two duties, one towards heaven and the other towards the earth, or because she bore two lances, or lastly, because she had two lights, the one her own and the other derived from the sun.

In Greece she was sometimes identified with Persephone, but more commonly with Artemis.2 From an expression of Aristophanes, who in his comedy The Lemnian Women called her the μεγάλη θεός (megalē theos),3 it may be inferred, that she was worshiped in Lemnos; and it was either from this island or from Thrace that her worship was introduced into Attica; for we know, that as early as the time of Plato the Bendideia were celebrated in Peiraeus every year on the twentieth of Thargelion (the second month of spring in the Attic calendar).

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References

Notes

  1. s.v. δίλογχον.
  2. Proclus, Elements of Theology, p. 353.
  3. Photius. Lexicon and Hesychius, s.v.

Sources

  • Hesychius s.v. Βένδις.
  • Livy. History of Rome xxxviii. 41.
  • Plato. Republic, i, 1.
  • Proclus, on Plato's Timaeus, p. 9.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Strabo. Geography x, 471.
  • Xenophon. Hellenica, ii, 4.11.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.