Listed 1 sub titles with search on: Ancients' feasts, games and rituals for wider area of: "VIOTIA Ancient area GREECE" .
VIOTIA (Ancient area) GREECE
A peculiar festival held by the Boeotians in honour of Here.
The goddess had, according to the story, once quarrelled with Zeus and hidden
herself on Mount Cithaeron. Her husband then spread the report that he was going
to marry another wife, and had an image of oak-wood decked out in bridal attire
and carried over Cithaeron on a chariot with a numerous train amid the singing
of marriage hymns. Here, in her jealousy, threw herself upon her supposed rival,
but, on discovering the trick, reconciled herself, with laughter, to Zeus, took
her seat on the chariot, and founded the festival in memory of the incident. The
feast was celebrated every seven years by the Plataeans alone and called the Little
Daedala. But every sixtieth year all the cities of the Boeotian federation kept
it as the Great Daedala. At the Little Daedala, guided by the note of a bird,
they fixed on a tree in a grove of oaks and cut a figure out of it, which they
dressed in bridal attire and took, as in marriage procession, to the top of Cithaeron.
Here they offered a goat to Zeus and a cow to Here, and burned the image with
the offering. At the Great Daedala the images made at the Little Daedala were
distributed by lot among the cities of the Boeotian confederacy, and the same
proceedings were then repeated.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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