Since 2600 BC, about most of the geographical area of \u200b\u200bAegean Sea and was under the influence of the first civilization Europe, the Minoan , which had its seat on the island of Crete and from there controlled most of the islands and the mainland coast.
was around 1800 BC when an Indo-European people, known by tradition as the Achaeans , entered from the north in the Balkan Peninsula, was extended through the Peloponnese and, after dominating the inhabitants primitive civilization created Mycenaean , commonly called because it was in the city of Mycenae, where he erected his kingdom more important.
Both civilizations came to coexist, but in 1450 BC Minoan disappeared for reasons not yet specified in detail accurately, and was the Mycenaean happened to hold the supremacy in the region. Even by the epics, the Achaeans came to control the Dardanelles, on the coast of Asia Minor, the triumph of the troops commanded by King Agamemnon of Mycenae in the Trojan War.
specialized According to some writers, there were other Indo-European peoples that time, were also settled in various parts of the Balkan peninsula, as the Ionians , which took hold in Attica, and the Aeolian that they did in Thessaly.
The domain of the Achaeans have lasted to 1200 BC, it was about this time that the Dorians , other Indo-over, they went from the north and imposed, among other circumstances, because they already mastered the technique of iron smelting and its armaments were significantly higher than bronze of the Achaeans. The principal place of seat of the Dorians was the Peloponnese, and Sparta its largest city.
difficult to determine if the input of each of these towns was to determine the displacement of, or if, as seems, there was some degree of fusion population. But in any case, it was under those tribal bases like they were forming the Hellenic population.
configuration adopted by their company at first was that of some independent kingdoms, which included a city dominated region as its centerpiece. And the form of government evolve from these early monarchies to a power exercised by aristocratic oligarchies which then led to the so-called " tyranny" and ended in most cases with regimens based on democracy, with the engine Athens and the example of the latter type of government.
Greek civilization was involved in an expansion process by all Mediterranean coastal areas, which led to the founding of a large number of colonies that contributed to the dissemination Hellenic culture and, as part of her, her religion.
Overview of religion in Greece
The earliest inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula and the Aegean islands have a Mediterranean culture, were farmers and, therefore, fertility rites officiated and related deities worshiped with farming. Instead, all the people that were invading the region were Indo-European culture and its pantheon of gods consisted divine heavenly. Thus, the Greek religion was forming in a long process of merger between the two types of worship, and finally characterized polytheistic, because were worshiped many gods, and also as anthropomorphic, as they represented the gods in human form and were endowed with the same characteristics, strengths and weaknesses than men, but their immortality and supernatural powers.
Among the major gods of religion in ancient Greece, most noteworthy is Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Dionysus, Hades, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, Poseidon, and, above all Zeus, the supreme god, ruler of the gods, men and the world. All of them resided on the summit of Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. In addition, to a lesser extent these gods older, also had a number of secondary deities, on the other hand, heroes, all deaths, among which include Hercules, Theseus, Icarus and Perseus.
Another feature of Greek religion is that it lacked a holy book and therefore was not dogmatic. What he did have was a series of myths and legends about the nature of the world and its origins, on religious cults and ritual practices who officiated their gods, as well as the memorable actions of the heroes mentioned above. Together, these myths and legends formed the so-called Greek mythology.
have strong religious anthropomorphism in ancient Greece, where divine pantheon Toro is not listed as one of their gods. And, contrary to what was happening in other religions of antiquity, in the generality of the Greek gods and did not find the combination, combination or confusion of bull-man figures. However, in the mythology itself there are passages in which the god Dionysus bull figure appears to relate to the concept of fertility, or Eros adorned with a bull or horse and Poseidon associated with the bull, to relate to the concept power, and should not be forgotten that one of the attributes of Zeus was the Bull, as a symbol of power and fertility, and to kidnap Europe adopted the figure of a white bull.
What turns very common in Greek mythology is to find a bull in the actions of gods and heroes exploits, or related to the concept of beauty and inspiring women of love, or even as being mythological, individually speaking. Are many myths about it, but we can chain several of them to find all these assumptions.
Minos, who was the son of Zeus and Europe, asked Poseidon to support it was he, of all his brothers, the one chosen to succeed the king of Crete Asterion. Poseidon helped him, and Minos promised in gratitude that the animal sacrifice that God chose. Then, Poseidon the sea gave rise to a beautiful white bull, but Minos was amazed at the animal and, forgetting his promise, he hid from his herd and sacrificed another bull.
Upon hearing, Poseidon was enraged and decided to take revenge on Minos by his wife, Pasiphae. To do this, Poseidon Pasiphae inspired an irresistible desire for the white bull, and the queen, to satisfy his passion, turned to Daedalus, who built with wood figure of a hollow cow for Pasiphae it was introduced and, thus, could be mounted by the white bull. The result of this relationship was that Pasiphae zoophilic became pregnant and gave birth to a monster with the body of man and bull-headed: the Minotaur.
Given the enormity of being as well as their evil and voracious appetite for human flesh, King Minos ordered Daedalus to build an intricate maze in the center that would lock the Minotaur could not leave him.
Before long, a son of Minos was assassinated in Athens after becoming Olympic champion in a tournament. In revenge, the king of Crete attacked Athens, and it surrendered. Among the conditions imposed Minos to accept the surrender was to betray Athens to Crete annual tribute consisting of seven youths and seven maidens as a sacrifice to the Minotaur.
Where relevant the third installment of the tax, a son of the king of Athens named Theseus volunteered to be one of the boys offered to the Minotaur and, thus, able to face it and try to kill him. Once Theseus was taken to Crete, he fell in love with the daughter of King Minos, Ariadne, and planned a strategy to help her lover to kill the Minotaur and get back inside the maze. So Theseus attached to the door of a maze out of the ball of thread Ariadne had given him, and then introduced into its interior. Once he met the Minotaur, Theseus confronted him and managed to kill him with a magical sword that he had also as Ariadne. Then, picking up the thread of the ball, managed to make his way back and exit the maze. are various legends that have been chained in the previous story, but you can still connect another one, in which the protagonist is the epitome of the heroes of Greek mythology: Hercules.
One of the twelve labors Hercules was commissioned to capture the Cretan Bull, which was precisely the beautiful white bull with which Pasiphae mated and, after that event, Poseidon was mad and started to wreak havoc in Crete.
Hercules and the Bull of Crete - Louis Tuaillon Hercules moved to Crete and, after obtaining the permission of King Minos, found the bull by the island. Once you are located and confronted him, grabbing him by the horns, got still and submit. Then load on the shoulders, brought him to the mainland, the city of Mycenae, to give it to Eurystheus. This, from her ferocity, freed him and the bull began to cause damage wherever he went. After crossing the Isthmus of Corinth, the bull reached the plain of Marathon, where he finally killed the Athenian hero Theseus.
As occurred in the myth of the abduction of Europe by Zeus, that of Pasiphae is presenting us the bull associated with divinity, in this case to Poseidon, and an exponent of fertilizing power. Sacrifices
bull in Greek religion
simple way of notes of everything collected by Francisco J. Rill flowers in his book " Del Toro in Antiquity: animal worship, sacrifice, hunting and party " can say that the Toro lost as divine entity in the merger process between the religion of the earliest inhabitants of Greece and the Indo-European peoples that were invading, but remained associated mythological Zeus, Poseidon, Eros and Dionysus as a vestige of its former status of deity.
However, even though he forfeited the specific category of divinity, the bull remained a revered animal in the Greek region, since its most common and important ritual was the sacrifice and, within them, the bull was retained as the offering favorite of the gods. This listing
bull, far from being trivial, is of great religious significance. The sacrifice was a connecting link between the man with the divine, considering, first, as a ritual of purification, which gave a scapegoat to remove the impurities or the ills of the community and, secondly, as a ritual of communion in which the victim, the bull in our case, not only the sanctity granted, but was identified with the deity for the faithful, to feed on the flesh of the slaughtered animals pass to join this divinity.
Sometimes even, it reached the end of eating raw meat, as shown in orgiastic rituals dedicated to the god Dionysus and as is described in Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae .
The fact that the Greeks consider that the slain animal passed into the realm of the sacred becomes more obvious, if possible, with the analysis of Martin P. Nilsson in his book "History Greek Religion", where states that: although the animal's flesh, as a matter corrupt, consumed by the faithful, men are mortal and are condemned to putrefaction, the animal's skeleton, and does not decompose easily, is deemed to belong to the gods because they were immortal, and it was to them that I was offered this part of the animal, either in burial or cremation.
And if there were specific occasions or rituals in which animals could be selected pigs, lambs, sheep and dogs preferred by the Greeks to the sacrifices was, without doubt, the bull. In fact, slaughter most famous of all, called "catastrophe " it came to sacrifice up to a hundred cattle.
Bullfighting celebrations in Thessaly
Taurokathapsia Emboss - Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is known that in the island of Crete was a bullfighting celebrations during the second millennium BC in which young people practice risky jumps bulls. What is not as popularly known is that a few thousand years later, there were also celebrations in Greece bullfighting. On the source a study Manuel Serrano Espinosa , professor at the University of Alicante, we will know the bullfights in Classical Greece were held in the region of Thessaly.
not know the exact name of the Crete bullfighting, however, thanks to the documentation of the classical period of Greece, we do know that bullfighting in Thessaly was called " Taurokathapsia ." And in regard to their chronology, the numismatic pieces that have survived indicate that taurokathapsia of Thessaly was held in the early V a. C., and it is possible that as far back as the seventh century BC
taurokathapsia Thessaly
The mode of celebration was a different bull bull jumps. First, it was not jumping on foot, but riders on the backs of their horses, bulls Enceladus at races and compliments that they intended to undermine the forces of the animal, then the horse to jump from the body of the bull, grabbing by the horns, trying to knock it down and break his neck. Once the lance, the bull's head was offered to the local deity as a symbol of power and offering fertility.
oldest literary testimony of Thessaly taurokathapsia what we Euripides, though it is an indirect reference, as it only mentions the skills of Thessaly in the dressage horse and the sacrifice of bulls. Heliodoro , however, provides a more detailed version of the celebration. Situates in Ethiopia, but the protagonist is a Thessalian name Theagenes that manages to bring down the bull, and then before an ecstatic audience, is presented to the Ethiopian king Hidapes to request and obtain the hand of his daughter.
Another testimony is that of Artemidorus , which advocates an Ionian origin of taurokathapsia. He says, came from Ephesus (see map of the second image) and expanded by the Attica, but also clarifies that where it was highlighted in Larissa, in Thessaly. Plato, meanwhile, describes a similar ceremony from Thrace, on the north coast of the Aegean.
The inscriptions are preserved as a group essential for the study of various aspects of these celebrations. Paradoxically, the first witness to its existence we do not come from Thessaly, but in Asia Minor (which might suggest some overlap with the statement of Artemidorus). However, the bulk of the inscriptions with this issue outside the region of Thessaly. And it is remarkable that all taurokathapsias would indicate that they were linked to local cults and attached to the religious sphere.
On the other hand, Numismatics provides several examples of these games gained popularity in Thessaly in the Classical period. Most of the coins date from the period 480-400 BC; important fact because indicates the length of such celebrations. On the coins we see a pattern that is repeated regularly: one side is the young rider at the moment to grab the bull by the horns and try to pass some kind of band between the antlers, while the reverse shows the horse galloping riderless with the inscription of the name "Larisa ."
On the back of some currencies is the image of the god Zeus Eleutherios, proving his allegiance to religious festivals where Eleutherios honored Zeus, Poseidon and Tauri.
Finally, indicate that remain two reliefs with representations of taurokathapsias. In one of them, from Smyrna, and is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, shows a full scene divided into different stages: the horse racing and dodging, jumping rider to hold on to the horns of the bull and the final outcome, the bull was shot down. In contrast, the other highlight, which is preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, only displays the time in which the rider is thrown from his mount and is clinging to the horns of the animal.
Undoubtedly, the taurokathapsia of the classical period of Greece Crete bullfighting differ in several aspects of its implementation, and can not be said that has its direct antecedent in Crete, but there is an element common: all the documents found so far tell us clearly that they were assigned bullfighting events in classical times to festivals and religious cults, which makes these celebrations a character that is beyond the scope of mere sporting event or profane.
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Off topic: given the proximity of the Christmas holidays, I want to wish everyone a few days of peace, happiness and with the times, work.
............... Merry Christmas!
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And, as is required, I urge the owners of copyright of the pictures I posted with this text that will allow me to maintain it with this blog because I have no profit, and the fact should have included them only want to provide their knowledge to users this page for a better understanding of the text.
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