ORGY: ORGY IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

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. 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. 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. 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.

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). 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). Byzantine lexicographers explain orgia as synonymous to "mysteries," with particular reference to Dionysos. The term is also employed by the anonymous author of the Hymn to Demeter (ll. 273 and 476), who relates it to the Eleusinian mysteries (see also Herodotos 5.61; Aristophanes, Frogs 386 and Thesmophorians 948). 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). 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. 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. A hostile usage of the term appears in Jerome, who wants to attack his Origenist adversaries (Epist. 84.3).

Despite 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 orgē ("anger, wrath, excessive passion"), is erroneous. According to modern scholars the word orgia must be connected to the verb erdō ("to offer a sacrifice"), whose perfect form is eorga (see Chantraine, 1968).

Orgy and Seasonal Feasts

Mircea Eliade established the strict relationship between seasonal feasts (for example, New Year ceremonies) and orgiastic performing of rituals. 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. It thus becomes simple to explain the orgies practiced by various ethnic groups, as well as the crystallization of some orgiastic relics in modern European farming ceremonies, in connection with the drama of vegetation and particularly with the ceremonials of agriculture in order that the reproductive powers in earth, animals, and humans can be stimulated by phallic dances followed by orgies, thus involving a sort of rebirth. As far as classical antiquity is concerned, certain feasts of vegetation are abundant in orgiastic elements and collective exaltation, such as the Floralia (celebrated in Rome at the end of April), the Lupercalia, or the festivals performed in honor of Caeres or Tellus.

Such an unbounded sexual frenzy can be likened to a divine hierogamy, because when sacred marriage is reenacted all the forces of the community are supposed to increase to their highest point. The earth is reawakened and the sky aroused so that the great cosmic marriage, symbolized by rain, will take place in the best possible conditions to ensure prosperity and new life (in this sense it is possible to explain also the links between orgies and initiation ceremonies).

Orgies can be found not only in the setting of agrarian ceremonies, although they always remained closely connected with rites of regeneration and fertility. A deeper metaphysical significance and psychological function of orgy clearly emerges when considering it as a way of expressing the life of the community as a whole. Humans lose their individuality in the orgy, combining into a single living unity; they perform a total fusion of emotions in which neither norm nor law is observed so that participants can enter a primal, pre-formal, chaotic state, using the power of imitative magic to assist the merging of the seeds into the one womb of the earth. Among the other functions, the orgy fulfils in the spiritual and psychological economy of a community. The orgy also symbolizes a renewal or regeneration of life. In fact, orgies make it possible for creation to be repeated because they bring back mythical states that existed in earlier times and to which humans hope to return, restored and regenerated.

A notion of a cosmos made up of cycles, which was born of chaos and returns to it through a catastrophe or a great dissolution, together with a thirst for regeneration and renewal, are implied in orgiastic ritual performances, whose aberrant forms represent a degradation of this idea of the rhythm of the universe. Since at a cosmological level the orgy represents chaos—that is, the disappearance of limits and boundaries and the fusion into a single unity—this wish for an abolition of time is particularly evident in orgies that take place, at various degrees, during New Year ceremonies, the seasonal dramas par excellence. Together with other patterns that characterize similar events, the symbolic return of primeval chaos indicates the abolition of profane time in order to effect the dissolution of the world and restore the mythical moment of the beginning and the end. This is why such festivals are constantly marked by an attempt at abolishing order and consuetudes; license is let loose, all rules are violated, norms are suspended, and there can be an overthrowing of social conditions or a converging of opposites.

Orgiastic Patterns in Reversal Rituals

Besides sexual promiscuousness, which is obviously a means to gain fertility or reinforce vegetation and ransom it from obscure and menacing evils, other elements or states of psychic exaltation can be related to orgiastic contexts. Among these are debauchery, revelry, dance, and especially laughter. Scholars have recorded cases that can be considered semi-orgiastic, including the Latin fescennine, which are naughty verses usually sung during wedding ceremonies; triumphal songs called carmina, in which the iocatio ("joke" or "jest", addressed by the troops to their victorious officers) represented an apotropaic device to cast off the idea of death and help the individual psyche escape from an oppressive realm; and the so-called "ritual of the sardonic laughter," recorded by the Greek historian Timaeus (Fragmente Griechischer historiker 566 F 64); according to his explanation, old people were sacrificed and pushed over a cliff by their sons, who made grimaces, probably under the effect of a bitter herb. In fact, orgies possess a ritual function connected with the cult of dead people, as can be inferred from persisting customs in ethnic or folkloric contexts where banquets and orgies occur after funerals. The same attitude was found in antiquity, and is testified by certain Church Fathers (Ambrose, On the Death of His Brother 2.12; Augustine, Sermons 311, PL 38.1415) and by many councils (e.g., Arles, 524; Auxerre, 590; London, 1342; York, 1367) that attempted to forbid these orgiastic practices, especially during the Middle Ages.

Mourning and its anomic features can be considered a liminal situation for the relatives of the deceased or for the entire community during periods of disease, epidemic, and famine; it is possible to show that these marginal situations are marked by a great variety of external patterning and reflect opposition to normal social features. The purpose inherent in such marginal situations is to temporarily remove individuals or groups from their normal social existence. Such typical patterns as role or status reversal in matters of clothing, food (e.g., novices consuming food and drinks that are usually forbidden), communication, and language add up to a sort of legal anarchy and have thus been linked to social instances of ransom or rebellion. Such reversals characterize a number of exceptional festivals, like Carnival or similar ancient equivalents.

Classical antiquity records various festivals during which what was normally forbidden was tolerated, including the Sacaea in Babylon (according to the third-century bce historian Berossus, in Fragmente Griechischer historiker 680 no. 2) or in the Pontus region (according to Strabo 11.8), which were celebrated in the summer in honor of the goddess Ishtar or Anaitis and which involved a servant disguised as a king; Zagmuk, or feast of the lots, which took place in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the year and included sexual license and a symbolic king dethronement; Kronia in Greece; Saturnalia in Rome; and women's festivals such as the Thesmophoria, and the Roman celebration of Bona Dea, which gave women in seclusion an opportunity to indulge in excesses in their own way (some writers, for example the Latin satirist Juvenal, considered these feasts to be nothing more than lascivious orgies). As far as these are concerned, in breaking the fetters of social and marital codes women inevitably return to nature—that is, to the premarital status of the maiden. To control such excesses by limiting them to dedicated periods could have helped safeguard the disjunction of sex and maternity that is typical of many cultures, especially Greece and Rome, and that is evidently jeopardized in the fertility festivals.

Temporary liberation from chains and bondage was the central feature of Kronia and Saturnalia. Moreover, like certain other Roman "interstitial" ceremonies, the Saturnalia festivities also included official cessation of all public services, such as the mundus patet, and the Saturnalia can thus be paired with the iustitium (public mourning). Saturnalia is counted among the most ancient Roman festivals, since it was already mentioned in Numa's calendar and continued till the end of paganism (see Macrobius's Saturnalia ). The festival began on December 17 and was celebrated by bareheaded people, according to Greek custom. It was an occasion for all Romans, citizens and slaves, to enjoy a holiday. Satire and derision were given free reign. Reversal patterns involved an interruption of normal political and business activities (not to mention the allowance of gambling and dice-playing, otherwise prohibited in everyday life), but the most important reversal was the exchange of roles between masters and slaves. The assimilation of this reversal to Carnival is, however, erroneous; this aspect of Carnival should be linked to New Year celebrations, Carnival being similar to other spring festivals, such as the Roman Liberalia.

Dionysiac Cult

In classical antiquity Dionysos was the ecstatic divinity most closely related to orgiastic cult. Among the numerous sources, the writer most responsible for consideration of Dionysiac ritual is the Greek tragedian Euripides. In his Bacchae (Bacchant Women, posthumously performed in 406 bce) Euripides described the introduction into Hellas of a new religion with a peculiar attitude towards the sacred, different from anything implied in the cult of the traditional Olympian gods. Among modern exegetes, Friedrich Nietzsche, borrowing from tradition, as well as drawing on his own imagination, made the figure of Dionysos an emblem of disruptive power, whose external marker is the divine mania or possession in which the followers of Dionysos are caught. The majority of scholarly interpretations rely on Nietzsche when underlining the irrational and "intoxicated" aspects of the cult. His account of ecstatic rituals in their wildest, most unrestrained forms, was taken as a model by subsequent scholars, mostly because his friend Erwin Rohde made this perspective acceptable to scientific thinking by stressing, along with the eruptive character and psychological nature of the Dionysiac, an irruptive and supposedly historical factor, which led Rohde to set the origins of the new religion outside of Greece. Even though Rohde's perspective was sometimes questioned (especially concerning the Thracian origins of the cult or his theory that Orphism was a "reformed Dionysism" deprived of its wildest aspects), in all modern accounts of the Dionysiac, an explosive hint has remained dominant. It is reflected in many scholars, who bound the core of the Dionysian religion in orgiasm. Such an explanation, however, is not unanimously accepted and has been questioned (by, for example, Karl Kerényi) by noticing that this phenomenon was only marginal to the cult of Dionysos.

Dionysiac religion indeed unveiled a particular kind of religious experience, which allowed participants to attain communion with a god and transformed a human being into a bacchos or a bacchē (an inspired, frantic person). The orgia performed in the honor of Demeter and Dionysos represented, so to speak, an absolute form of sacrifice, which was able to grant an absolute form of salvation, as opposed to a relative one. All this meant a radical change in the human condition and implied going beyond human boundaries and limits, that is, taking part in divine realms. Moreover, for those who don't close their minds against Dionysiac experience (the demand for which is sometimes, at their peril, ignored by humans), such an experience can be a deep source of spiritual power and beatitude. It is possible to hint at a further effect, a merging of the individual consciousness within a group consciousness: the worshipper is at one not only with the god master of life, but with his or her fellow worshippers, as well as with the entirety of life on earth. Recent sociological approaches have employed the idea of Dionysiac orgiasm in order to stress, in contemporary daily life, the strong hedonistic ethic, which expresses only passing feelings, passion, and bonds of shared emotion, so typical of a "tribal" or mass society.

Drinking wine, which breaks inhibitions, acquired an important religious value because the wine permitted people to become entheoi (full of god). There were other means to reach this status: the strange oreibasia (mountain dancing) described in the parodos of the Bacchae reflects a ritual practiced by women's societies at Delphi (and also in other places) down to Plutarch's time. This took place in midwinter in alternate years (hence the name trietēris, "triennial festival") and has often been explained as a commemorative rite, in imitation of the maenads, who are said to have been associated with the god in the old days. Maenadism is supported by testimonies in epigraphic sources and therefore must not be considered a mere literary device. Some scholars have borrowed from medical language the term collective hysteria to designate such a phenomenon or have traced similar attitudes in other cultures: it was a compulsive and obsessive dance, characterized by a particular carriage of the head and tossing back of the hair, in which participants experienced a sense of being possessed by an alien personality. It has been suggested that in Greece the ritual oreibasia may have developed out of spontaneous attacks of hysteria and that by channeling this hysteria in an organized rite once every two years the Dionysiac cult kept it within bounds and gave it a relatively harmless outlet. Another obviously primitive feature of the oreibasia is snake-handling, for which numerous parallels can be traced in folkloric contexts.

The culminating act of the Dionysiac winter dance was the tearing to pieces (sparagmos ) and eating raw (ōmophagia ) of an animal body, an act that in all sources is described as a mixture of supreme exaltation and supreme repulsion. It is at once holy and horrible, fulfillment and uncleanness, sacrament and pollution—the same violent conflict of emotional attitudes that lies at the root of all religion of the Dionysiac type. Later writers explained the ōmophagia by supposing it to commemorate the day when the infant Dionysos was himself torn to pieces and devoured. Modern explanations, however, link this custom to psychological causes, because it seems likely that the warm and bleeding victim was felt to embody the vital powers of the god, which by this act were transferred to the worshippers. In this rite, therefore, the god was present in his bestial incarnation (bull, lion, snake) and in that shape was torn and eaten. The resulting effect was to liberate the instinctive life in human beings from the bondage imposed on them by reason and social custom: the worshippers became conscious of a strange, new vitality, which was attributed to the god's presence within them. Some scholars went so far as to surmise cases of human sacrifice, even though there are only scattered indications pointing in this direction. Human sacrifices are, however, sometimes linked to initiation rites, and in classical antiquity charges of ritual murders are often associated with orgiastic practice.

Orgiastic Elements in Mystery Religions and Foreign Cults

Over the centuries the original features of Dionysiac cult were brought under state control and tamed, loosing much of their original character. Religion of the orgiastic type nevertheless began to emerge again under other names. At the end of the fifth century Athens was invaded by a multitude of foreign gods, as is clearly shown by many literary references to the eastern and northern "mystery" gods Cybele and Bendis, Attis, Adonis, and Sabazios.

The Phrygian god Sabazios is of special interest in relation to Dionysos because Sabazios was considered a sort of Oriental—or still un-Hellenized—counterpart of Dionysos, who promised his devotees identification with deity. Several of the old ritual elements mentioned in the parodos of the Bacchae are attested by Demosthenes for the Sabazios cult in a well-known passage from his oration On the Crown, delivered against Aeschines. Other ancient sources closely relate Dionysos and Sabazios, whose veneration is largely attested (see, for example Diodorus 4.4.1, and Iohannes Lydus, de Mensibus 4.51).

The potentially dangerous implications in Dionysiac cult are displayed in the famous scandal of the Bacchanalia, which took place in Rome in 186 bce and led to the suppression of the cult. Besides the contemporary allusion in the Plautine comedy Casina, a detailed account is reported by the Augustan historian Livy (39.8–19). According to Livy, the rites of initiation, including feasting and drunkenness, were held at night so that darkness could conceal "promiscuous mating of free men and women," as well as occasional murders. It was a classical case of immorality under the guise of religion, and the Roman authorities felt bound to prosecute the worshippers of Bacchus by accusing them of coniuratio (conspiracy against the state). Bacchants were also persecuted outside the Roman Republic, as is shown in a famous inscription (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum I² 2581) from southern Italy, which contains the prohibition decree promulgated by the Roman Senate.

In discussing the case of the Roman repression of the Bacchanalia, scholars have noticed how charges of promiscuous intercourse or, more generally, of immoral behavior were directed against foreign cults as a form of ban or marginalization. Of course many of these cults were genuinely characterized, totally or partially, by orgiastic attitudes. These attitudes gradually diminished, as happened with Dionysism, when those cults came to be considered part of public religion.

Some of the most famous and widespread mystery cults during the Hellenistic age and late antiquity are characterized by collective ecstasy and frantic behavior (even though without sexual licentiousness). Among them was Montanism, a Christian sect, strongly influenced by pagan local cults, that originated in Phrygia in the second century ce and counted among its features prophetism and ecstasy. Malicious slanders about Montanists are, however, recorded by Jerome, who mentions cannibalistic rites and children sacrifices (Epist. 41).

The annual rites that commemorated Osiris's death and dismemberment were performed with exaggerated lamentations and with a phallophory, that is, the carrying of a phallus in procession. This detail led Herodotos to pair Dionysos and Osiris, but there are too few elements to accept this perspective, except in the sense of a syncretism between these two gods because of their agrarian features.

The veneration of Cybele (originally an Anatolian and Phrygian mother goddess, who was soon interpreted as Demeter) was widespread throughout Greece, and at the very end of the third century bce Cybele was introduced into Roman culture. By this time the veneration of Cybele had been deprived of its most barbaric features, including loud ululations, rousing music produced by cymbals, drums, and flutes, and wild dances that incited people to bloody self-flagellation, self-mutilation, and self-castration. Similar practices, which reached their apex in the spring festival commemorative of Attis, were reserved for noncitizen adherents. One of the most relevant literary documents, which presents ecstatic frenzy in its most shocking and bloody aspects, is the epyllium Attis, written in the first century bce by the Latin poet Catullus. This poem shows how orgiastic patterns could seem striking and even repugnant to a civilized audience.

Dea Syria (the title of Atargatis-Derketo in the Greco-Roman world) resembles other mother goddesses and fertility goddesses of Asia Minor, such as Aphrodite-Astarte and Rhea-Cybele. Dea Syria shares much with the cult of both of these: procession to the sea, hydrophory (the act of carrying water), lavatio (ritual washing), ecstatic dancing, castration, and phallolatry (an account of her rites and her temple in Hierapolis is offered in a pamphlet written by Lucian). Bellona, who was identified with the Middle Eastern goddess Ma after the Roman general Sulla became acquainted with this goddess in 92 bce during his campaigns in the East, and whose cult shared many patterns with that of the Magna Mater, belongs to the same sphere as Dea Syria. The Latin writer Apuleius (second century ce offers a totally negative account of the priests of the goddess in the eighth book of his Metamorphoses (chaps. 26–30) in order to stress a sharp contrast to the Isiac religion of which he was a worshipper. Apuleius describes the priests of the Syrian goddess as thieves and swindlers; indecent, lascivious, and dishonest, they perform wild dervish dances, engage in self-mutilation, and abandon themselves to aberrant and promiscuous sexual practices.

Orgiastic rituals are elsewhere described in classical novels because of a certain fondness for exotic and unusual details. It is disputed whether the mysteries of Priapus described by Petronius in his Satyricon (16–26, 6) really took place or must be considered a literary fiction because of the insistence on Priapic themes throughout the novel, along with a constant attitude of parody. These mysteries were intended as a sort of counterpart of the rites of Bona Dea, and are restricted to women. Organized and directed by a lustful matron, the ceremony turns into a long and far-fetched nocturnal orgy, which involves the male actors of the novel.

The Phoinikika (Phoenician Histories), a Greek fragmentary romance preserved in a badly damaged papyrus (Pap. Col. Inv. 3328), recently attributed to the Sophist Lollianus of Ephesus (late second century ce), describes the ritual murder of a child, followed by the eating of its heart and then promiscuous intercourse. These episodes were compared by Albert Henrichs, who first edited the papyrus, to the myth of Dionysos-Zagreus, dismembered by the Titans, and to the charges against Christian religion and some late accounts about libertine Gnostics. The text is, however, too fragmentary and corrupt to infer such details and to permit so complex a reading. Much more convincing is a reading provided by J. J. Winkler and S. A. Stephen, who dismantle Henrichs's theory and consider the whole scene analogous to the accounts of scheintod (apparent death) traceable in other classic novels.

Christians and Gnostics

Charges of immorality were imputed to Christian communities already at the end of the first century. They were also accused of coniuratio (conspiracy against the state), and many similarities have been noted between the suppression of the Bacchanalia and accusations against Christians. During the second century accusations of Thyestean banquets (anthropophagy) and Oedipodean intercourse (incestuous or orgiastic practices) increased and provoked rebuttals from a number of Christian apologists, including Justin (Apology I 26.7), Tertullian (Apologeticum 39), and Minucius Felix (Octavius 9), whose accurate accounts probably reflect a pagan source. According to F. J. Dölger, such accusations were often a pagan misunderstanding of the Christian Eucharist and lacked any factual basis. They show nevertheless an underlying ritual pattern, which linked the alleged crimes of the Christians to similar practices of pagan origin in order to construct a coherent ritual series that included, after an overturning of the lamp so that savageness could be concealed, the murder of a child, the partaking of the victim's blood and inner parts for initiatory purposes, the administering of an oath, and finally, sexual libertinism.

Certain Gnostic rites can be considered one constituent among others equally important that shaped the specific character of anti-Christian accusations in the second century. In fact, Gnostic sects, with their peculiar mythology and ethics, including their disdain for popular religion and morality, were natural targets for accusations of immoral behavior. Along with their predecessors at Corinth, which emerge from the reproaches of the apostle Paul (see 1 Cor. 6.12 ff.), Justin's first apology is apparently aware of affinities between these or similar Gnostic rites and the crimes that were alleged against the Christians. The accounts of the so-called libertine Gnostics found in Clement's Stromateis and, later, in Epiphanius's Panarion (fourth century) are major sources for knowledge of such rites.

Clement mentions by name various Gnostic groups (Basilidians [3.1.1.1 ff.], Carpocratians [3.2.5.1 ff.], Antitaktai [3.4.34.3 ff.], and many other unnamed sects [3.4.27.1 ff.]) that held lavish banquets, after which they extinguished the lights and indulged in sexual promiscuity. Their practices are compared to the cult of Aphrodites Pandemos and her supposed "mysteries." Some groups of Gnostics in the second century and the beginning of the third (according to Clement) treated women as common property and in their agapē practiced what they preached, interpreting sexual intercourse as a "mystical communion." Already the followers of Simon, according to Hippolytus, advocated promiscuous intercourse, asserting that this was perfect love, which helped participants achieve reciprocal sanctification. The Sethians did the same. Irenaeus offers similar accounts of the Cainites, Sodomites, and Carpocratians. At the time of Epiphanius, the libertine sects had apparently multiplied in Egypt, since he mentions by name the Nicolaites, Stratiotici, Phibionites, Zaccheans, and Barbeliotes. What Epiphanius describes about the Gnostic banquet and the orgy that followed, claiming that he personally met some of these sectarians, is nearly identical to Irenaeus, except that the account of Epiphanius is much richer in piggish ritual details. For example, besides uniting themselves in promiscuous intercourse after rich dinners, they practiced coitus interruptus and gathered and ate menstrual blood and sperm. In addition, the sectarians could not beget children and if a woman were to conceive after such an orgy, the fetus would be aborted, pounded in a mortar, seasoned with spices, honey, and oil, and then eaten. This cannibalistic feast was, according to their doctrine, the perfect Passah (Panarion 26.5.5).

According to Epiphanius, such details also occupied a definite position in Gnostic theology. By examining heresiologists' accounts, it emerges that it is not possible to dismiss libertine Gnostics as mere sexual deviates, for their aim was to throw into confusion the entire present order of the world, insofar as it is the work of the creator. Libertine Gnostics considered the flesh as perishable because it is the archon's own; for the same reason they believed that procreation should be abolished because it only prolonged the time that the psyche had to spend in this world. Even the disgusted way in which Epiphanius describes their dinner fellowship displays certain liturgical characteristics, which parallel some common patterns, such as the idea of eating together or such liturgical formulas as the prayer of dedication after the act or the closing confession.

It is indeed possible that the communitarian dinner of these sects was considered a characteristic meal in which the basic element was the unio mystica, which Christians usually explain as a gathering of believers who become one body by partaking of one bread. In Gnostic conventicles such a union was achieved with the production and spreading of sperm, which is the life-giving, divine element of man, indeed a part of God himself. It was "perfect" love, too, in the sense that it was not directed toward procreation or any other selfish end, but was exclusively for the purpose of being led to God. There was also a sort of antiphrastic celebration of the Eucharist, since the object of the dedicated sacrifice is identified with the body of Christ in a physical sense, insofar as it is the life-substance of man, the sperm. According to modern scholars, such a rite represented a sublimation process of the divine spark wrapped in the human body, shaped on the soul's return to divine realms, after having been exiled on earth. This particular form of "libertinism" should be linked to a more generic anomie so peculiar to Gnostic systems, but much more can be related to similar practices attested in Tantrism or Daoism—a sort of sexual mysticism whose purpose is symbolizing cathartic transformation or allegorical elevation towards the divine.

See Also

Dionysos; Mystery Religions.

Bibliography

There is no specific work devoted to orgy in classical antiquity, but there is a seminal discussion in Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (New York, 1958). Eliade also investigated the close connection between orgiastic patterns and marginal groups in Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago, 1976), chapters 5 and 6. On extra-European folkloric contexts see Vittorio Lanternari, "Orgia sessuale e riti di recupero nel culto dei morti," Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni (SMSR ) 24–25 (1953–1954): 163–188. See also the monograph by Susanna Foral, Die Orgie. Vom Kult des Altertums zu Gruppensexe des Gegenwart (Munich, Germany, 1981).

Reversal rituals in classical antiquity, such as the Thesmophoria and the Saturnalia, are exhaustively investigated by H. S. Versnel in Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion ; vol. 2: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Leiden, Netherlands, 1993).

Many studies are devoted to Dionysos and his worship. Euripides' Bacchae is edited with an introduction and commentary by Eric R. Dodds (Oxford, 1944). The same scholar offers an interesting discussion on maenadism in the first appendix of his monograph, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, Calif., and Los Angeles, 1951). On the same theme, see Albert Henrichs, "Greek Maenadism from Olympians to Messalina," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 82 (1978): 121–160.

After Friedrich Nietzsche's Die Geburt der Tragödie oder Griechentum und Pessimismus (Berlin and New York, 1972) and Erwin Rohde's Psyche: Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 2d ed. (Tübingen, Germany, 1898), the idea of Dionysiac orgiastic frenzy was developed by Walter F. Otto, Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus (Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1933), as well as by Henry Jeanmarie, Dionysos: Histoire de culte de Bacchus (Paris, 1951). See, however, the different attitudes shown by Karl Kerényi, Dionysos: Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens (Munich, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, 1976), translated into English by Ralph Manheim as Dionysos: Archetypal Images of Indestructible Life (Princeton, N.J., 1976). Dionysiac mysteries and similar cults have received a popularized, but well informed, treatment by Gérard Freyburger, Maire-Laure Freyburger, and Jean-Christian Tautil, Sectes religieuses en Grèce et à Rome dans l'antiquité païenne (Paris, 1986). See, also, the proceedings of a conference on orgiastic patterns in ancient Greek Religion, "Actes du III Colloque du C.E.R.G.A. sur l'element orgiastique dans la religion grecque ancienne," in Kernos 5 (1992): 13-220.

A sociological interpretation of collective frenzy and orgiastic features in modern societies is provided by Michel Maffesoli, L'ombre de Dionysos, contribution à une sociologie de l'orgie (Paris, 1982). On the political and religious value of the Senatusconsultum de Bacchanalibus, see Matthias Gelzer, Die Unterdrückung der Bacchanalien bei Livius, in Kleine Schriften III, pp. 256–269 (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1964); Robert Turcan, "Religion et politique dans l'affaire des Bacchanales: A propos d'un livre récent," Revue Histoire Religions 180 (1972): 3–28; and Wilfried Nippel, "Orgien, Ritualmored und Verschwrung? Die Bacchanalien Prozesse des 186 v.Chr" in Grosse Prozesse der römischen Antike, edited by Ulrich Manthe and Jürgen von Ungern Sternberg, pp. 65-73 (Munich, Germany, 1997).

The charges against Christians and other "marginal" groups in antiquity receive an extensive discussion in Franz Joseph Dölger, "Sacramentum infanticidii," Antike und Christentum 4 (1934): 118–200; Albert Henrichs, "Pagan Ritual and the Alleged Crimes of the Early Christians," in Kyriakon: Festschr Johannes Quasten, edited by Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann, pp. 18–35 (Münster, Germany, 1973); Robert M. Grant, "Charges of Immorality against Various Religious Groups in Antiquity," in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, edited by R. van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren, pp. 161–170 (Leiden, Netherlands, 1981); and Agnes A. Nagy, "Superstitio et coniuratio," Numen 49 (2002): 178–192. For classical novels (with particular reference to Lollianos), after the edition provided by Albert Heinrichs, Die Phoinikika des Lollianos. Fragmente eines neuen griechischen Romans (Bonn, West Germany, 1972), see Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, edited by Susan A. Stephens and John J. Winkler, pp. 314 ff. (Princeton, N.J., 1995).

On the so called libertine Gnostics, see Norbert Brox, "Nikolaos und Nikolaiten," Vigiliae Christianae 19 (1965): 27–30; Stephen Benko, "The Libertine Gnostic Sect of the Phibionites according to Epiphanius," Vigiliae Christianae 21 (1967): 103–119; Michel Tardieu, "Epiphane contre les Gnostiques," Tel Quel 88 (1981): 64–91; and Giovanni Casadio, Vie gnostiche all'immortalità (Brescia, Italy, 1997).

For terminology, see Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire des mots, p. 816 (Paris, 1968).

Chiara Ombretta Tommasi (2005)