The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus

Abstract

My attention was called recently to an account by G. M. Vizyenos of a Carnival festival celebrated in the district about Viza (ancient Βιζύη) in Thrace so remarkable that it seemed worth while to verify the author's account by a personal visit. This I was able to do at the Carnival of 1906, and the account below has been drawn up from my notes, supplemented by this article, from which I quote everything of value.Of the writer's good faith there is no doubt, and of almost all the points he mentions I had ocular confirmation. He was a native, not of Haghios Gheorghios, the village whose festival he describes, but of Viza itself, the chief place in the district, lying some two hours to the west. He left his native place while still a boy, and died at Athens in 1896, aged forty-two. The middle part of his life he spent in Germany, and he does not seem ever to have returned to Thrace. His account is therefore probably a description of the festival as it was in his youth some forty years ago, when modern conditions had affected the district even less than' at present. He calls it σαλό and makes as many classical comparisons as possible. All these I have omitted, and drawn upon him only for matters of fact.