Bacchanalia
or DIONYSIA, feasts in honor of Bacchus, or Dionysos, characterized by licentiousness and revelry, and celebrated in ancient Athens. The Bacchantes of both sexes were clothed in fawn-skins, crowned with ivy, and bore in their hands thyrsi, that is, spears entwined with ivy. These feasts passed from the Greeks to the Romans, who abolished them in B. c. 186.
BACCHANTE (bak-an'tē), a person taking part in revels in honor of Bacchus.
BACCHIGLIONE (bak-il-yō'-na), a river of northern Italy, rises in the Alps, passes through the towns of Vicenza and Padua, and enters the Adriatic near Chioggia, after a course of about 90 miles.
BACCHUS (bak-us), the god of wine, son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Semele. He first taught the cultivation of the vine and the preparation of wine. His love was shared by several; but Ariadne, whom he found deserted upon Naxos, alone was elevated to the dignity of a wife, and became a sharer of his immortality. In art he is usually represented crowned with wine leaves, and a mantle is hung negligently around his shoulders; sometimes a fawn-skin hangs across his breast. He is often accompanied by sileni, bacchantes, satyrs, etc. BACCHYLIDES (bak-il'ē-dēs), a Greek poet, a native of Julis, a town on the island of Cos. He was a cousin of the still more famous lyric poet Simonides, with whom he remained for some time at the court of Hiero and Sicily.
He traveled also in the Peloponnesus. He is said to have been a rival of Pindar.
He flourished about 470 в. c. In 1895 a well-preserved text of his poems was discovered and published, and Bacchylides has now taken a permanent place as a master of Greek verse. a BACCIFEROUS (bak-sif'er-us), term applied to those trees that bear berries. They are of four kinds: (1) Such as bear a caliculate, or naked berry; the flower and calix both falling off together, and leaving the berry bare; as the sassafras trees. (2) Such as have a naked monospermous fruit; that is, containing in it only one seed; as the arbutes. (3) BACH Such as have but polyspermous fruit; that is, containing two or more kernels or seeds within it; as the jesminum, ligustrum. (4) Such as have their fruit composed of many acini, or round, soft balls, set close together, like a bunch of grapes; as the uva marina.