Bendis


Bendis was a Thracian goddess associated with hunting whom the Athenians identified with Artemis and who was introduced into Athens about 430 BC. She was a huntress, like Artemis, but was accompanied by dancing satyrs and maenads on a fifth-century red-figure stemless cup.

Worship

By a decree of the oracle of Dodona, which required the Athenians to grant land for a shrine or temple her cult was introduced into Attica by immigrant Thracian residents, and, though Thracian and Athenian processions remained separate, both cult and festival became so popular that in Plato's time its festivities were naturalized as an official ceremonial of the city-state, called the Bendideia. Among the events were nighttime torch-races on horseback, mentioned in Plato's Republic, 328:
The 'Bendideia' also featured a solemn joint procession of Athenians and Thracians to the Goddess's sanctuary, located at the harbor of Piraeus. A red-figure cup , of ca 440-430, seems to commemorate the arrival of the newly authorized cult; it shows Themis and a booted and cloaked Bendis, who wears a Thracian fox-skin cap.
A small marble votive stele of Bendis, -375 BCE, found at Piraeus, shows the goddess and her worshippers in bas-relief. The image shows that the Thracian goddess has been strongly influenced by Athenian conceptions of Artemis: Bendis wears a short chiton like Artemis, but with an Asiatic snug-sleeved undergarment. She is wrapped in an animal skin like Artemis and has a spear, but has a hooded Thracian mantle, fastened with a brooch. She wears high boots. In the fourth century BCE terracotta figurine at the Louvre she is similarly attired and once carried a spear.
by the Bendis Painter, –370 BCE
Elsewhere in Greece, the cult of Bendis did not catch on.
The "Phrygian rites" Strabo mentioned referred to the cult of Cybele that was also welcomed to Athens in the 5th century.

Related deities

The Athenians may have blended the cult of Bendis with the equally Dionysiac Thracian revels of Kotys, mentioned by Aeschylus. Archaic female cult figures that are unearthed in Thrace or Bulgaria now are identified with Bendis.
Bendida Peak on Trinity Peninsula in Antarctica is named after the goddess.