BRAURONIA. - Festivals in honor of Artemis, celebrated at Brauron on the eastern coast of Attica and particularly intended for women. The priestesses of the goddess were the bear-maidens, Athenian girls between the ages of 5 and 10, dressed in a saffron-colored peplos; they recall other priesthoods named after an animal in Greece and Asia Minor. For some they would be a remnant of animal disguises such as appear frequently in Minoan cult, for others they would testify that the goddess originally had the appearance of an animal. At the B. a goat was sacrificed; the kanephoroi took part in the festival, which presupposes a procession to the sanctuary. Every five years the B. were celebrated in a more solemn form: Athens sent envoys and it was probably then that those contests of rhapsodes took place which Pisistratus seems to have taken as a model for the Panathenaea. Connected with the B. is the legend according to which Pelasgian, Lemnian or Tyrrhenian pirates had abducted the Attic women who had taken part in them.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: Jessen, s. v. in Pauly-Wissowa, III, col. 825 ff.; L. Deubner, Attische Feste, Berlin 1932, p. 207 ff.; M. Nilsson, Gesch. der griech. Religion, I, Munich 1941, p. 455 ff.

Luisa Banti

@incollection{ec3_brauronie_brauronia, author = {Banti, Luisa}, title = {Brauronie (ΒΡΑΥΡΌΝΙΑ)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {49}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/brauronie-brauronia} }

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Brauronia

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