[image ALT: Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]
mail:
Bill Thayer

[image ALT: Cliccare qui per una pagina di aiuto in Italiano.]
Italiano

[Link to a series of help pages]
Help
[Link to the next level up]
Up
[Link to my homepage]
Home

 p44  Agraulia

Article by Leonhard Schmitz, Ph.D., F.R.S.E., Rector of the High School of Edinburgh
on p98 of

William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.:
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875.

AGRAU′LIA (ἀγραυλία), was a festival celebrated by the Athenians in honour of Agraulos, the daughter of Cecrops (Dict. of Biogr. s.v.). We possess no particulars respecting the time or mode of its celebration; but it was, perhaps, connected with the solemn oath, which all Athenians, when they arrived at manhood (ἔφηβοι), were obliged to take in the temple of Agraulos, that they would fight for their country, and always observe its laws (Lycurg. c. Leocr. p189; Dem. de Legat. p438; Plut. Alcib. 15; Stobaeus, Serm. XLI.141; Schömann, De Comitiis, p332; Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterth. vol. I p476, 2nd ed.).

Agraulos was also honoured with a festival in Cyprus, in the month Aphrodisius, at which human victims were offered (Porphyr. De Abstin. ab Anim. I.2).


[image ALT: Valid HTML 4.01.]

Page updated: 10 May 07