Balletys
Balletys ( Greek Βαλλετύς "throwing") was a cult festival that regularly took place in Eleusis , about the precise nature of which little is known. Based on the name, one can assume that they were fighting games.
Kevin Clinton does not believe that the Balletys were identical to the Eleusinia , rather he assumes that the Balletys were the cult festival of the Demophon of Eleusis , which is mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter . Hesychios makes a corresponding statement and at the time of Athenaios balletys and Eleusinia were separate festivals.
The Homeric hymn reports that because of his mother's screams of fear, Metaneira Demophon was wrested too early from the fire that was supposed to burn away his mortality, which is why he remained mortal. Nevertheless he should (speaks Demeter):
- ... to be honored forever because he was on my knees and slept in my arms. So when the years turn and spring appears, the sons of Eleusis are to wage war with one another and be constant in grim controversy.
swell
- Athenaios Deipnosophistai 9.406d
- Hesychios, sv Βαλλετύς
- Homeric Hymn 2 To Demeter 264ff
literature
- Kevin Clinton: IG I2 5, the Eleusinia, and the Eleusinians. In: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 100, No. 1 (1979), p. 5
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Persson Nilsson : Greek festivals of religious importance. Leipzig 1906, p. 414