Following hints enucleated by Wilhelm Mannhardt and James Frazer, Eliade considered how the orgy sets flowing the sacred energy of life, so that moments of crisis or abundance in nature are the privileged occasion for unleashing an orgy. Mircea Eliade established the strict relationship between seasonal feasts (for example, New Year ceremonies) and orgiastic performing of rituals. According to modern scholars the word orgia must be connected to the verb erd ō ("to offer a sacrifice"), whose perfect form is eorga (see Chantraine, 1968). 84.3).ĭespite the gradual development of such a meaning, the ancient etymology (attested by Clement of Alexandria in Protrepticus 2.13.1.2 and Servius, Commentary on Virgil's Aeneid 4.302), which relates the term to org ē ("anger, wrath, excessive passion"), is erroneous. A hostile usage of the term appears in Jerome, who wants to attack his Origenist adversaries ( Epist. In Latin language and literature the word orgia shares the same features as in Greek (mystery cults, Dionysiac rites), but it is interesting to note that the term is once employed by the Christian poet Prudentius in his Peristephanon (2.65) to understand Christian rites. There are other examples of frantic and orgiastic dances, probably of Oriental origin, practiced in honor of the Laconian Artemis (Aristophanes, Lysistrata 1312 Vergil, Georgics 2.487), where the female dancers are often associated with the maenads. Sometimes orgia is applied to Orphism (Herodotos II.81) and the rites of the Cabeiri (Herodotos 2.51, which does not show orgiastic features, notwithstanding the veneration of a sacred phallus see, however, Diodorus 5.49, which shows an intermingling with the cult of Cybele and the Corybants). 273 and 476), who relates it to the Eleusinian mysteries (see also Herodotos 5.61 Aristophanes, Frogs 386 and Thesmophorians 948). The term is also employed by the anonymous author of the Hymn to Demeter (ll. Byzantine lexicographers explain orgia as synonymous to "mysteries," with particular reference to Dionysos. Classical writers, including Plato and the tragedians, variously employed the term to designate sacred rituals (see, still in the first century ce, Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades 34, about a rite in honor of Athena). The Greek word orgia is first attested in a Milesian inscription dating back to the fifth century bce that shows a dedication by a dancers' brotherhood ( Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum 57.4). From the eighteenth century onwards, in fact, the term orgy has been used to refer to wild or dissolute revels marked by license or debauchery in this sense it is currently employed in religious studies to refer to collective behavior (comprehensive of indulging in excessive bodily activity by means of rave music, dancing, banquets, promiscuous sexual intercourse, and the infringement of normal order or rules) that sanctions a festive period in order to reinforce the vital energies of the cosmos and human communities. It is probably this latter meaning that gradually led to a derogatory usage (see, for example, Plato, Laws 910), which, however, is a modern one. Orgia became, in addition, the technical term to designate mystery cults and rites connected with festivals in honor of Dionysos that were usually characterized by an ecstatic or frantic attitude and were celebrated with dancing, singing, and drinking. In ancient Greece and Rome the plural orgia was a sacral word that applied to any ceremonies practiced in the worship of various deities, with or without implication of extravagance. ORGY: ORGY IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
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