Bendis

Also Known As: Greek Βενδῖς; a Thracian goddess, called “the Great Goddess” by Aristophanes and “two-speared” by Cratinus; the name is usually traced to an Indo-European root meaning “to bind”
Region/Culture: Central and Eastern Europe
Mythos: Balkan Mythology, Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Bendis is a huntress goddess of the Thracians, armed with two spears and linked by Greek writers to the moon and to Artemis.
Role in Mythos: She is the one Thracian deity known to have been given a public cult, a sanctuary and a state festival at Athens, where she arrived around 430 BC.
Relation to Humans: Thracians living at the port of Piraeus and Athenian citizens both formed worshipping societies in her name, and walked in separate processions on her feast day. Her worshippers honoured her at night with a relay race on horseback in which the riders passed lit torches from hand to hand.

On an early summer evening, in the harbour town of Piraeus, the horses came out after dark. Each rider carried a torch, and at the end of his stretch he leaned across and handed the flame to the next man without stopping. Athenians ran torch races all the time, but they ran them on foot. This one was done from the saddle, the Thracian way, and it was new enough that a man in the crowd had to explain it to Socrates. The philosopher had walked the five miles down from the city that morning to say a prayer to the goddess and watch her first festival. He thought the local procession was very fine. He thought the Thracians marched just as well.

That is how Plato opens the Republic, and it is the best-lit hour in the whole life of Bendis. She was a foreigner. Her people lived north of the Aegean, in the hill country and river plains of Thrace, and they left no books. Almost everything said about her was written by Greeks, who looked at a huntress with spears and reached for the nearest name they had. Herodotus says the Thracians worship only three gods, and calls one of them Artemis. He also says that Thracian and Paeonian women never sacrifice to “Artemis the Queen” without wrapping the offering in wheat straw. He does not use the name Bendis, and the link to her is a reasonable guess rather than a statement in his text.

Her arrival in Athens can be dated more closely than most divine arrivals. A temple account of 429 BC already lists her treasury among those of the city’s lesser gods. A battered decree from the same generation sets out a priestess, a sacrifice and an all-night celebration. A later inscription, cut by her Thracian worshippers around 260 BC, looks back on the founding with some pride: the Thracians, alone of all foreign peoples, had been given the right to own land in Attica and build a shrine, on the word of the oracle at Dodona, and the right to march in procession from the public hearth in the heart of Athens down to the sea. Why a city at war chose that moment to honour a Thracian goddess is not hard to work out. Athens wanted Thracian kings as allies, Thracian timber for its ships and Thracian soldiers in its pay. The piety was real. So was the politics.

The shrine itself, the Bendideion, stood on Munychia, the steep hill above the eastern harbour, close to an older sanctuary of Artemis. Xenophon mentions it in passing when he describes the street fight of 403 BC, with armed men pushing up the road that led to both temples. Nothing of the building has been securely found. What survives are the stones her worshippers paid for, and those give her a body.

On a marble relief now in the British Museum she stands at the right of the panel, taller than the mortals in front of her, as gods on such reliefs always are. She wears a short tunic belted at the waist, an animal skin knotted over it, a heavy cloak down her back, boots with fur flaps at the top and a soft pointed cap. One hand rests on a spear. The other holds out a shallow bowl. Facing her are two bearded officials and a file of naked young men, the winning relay team, come to thank her. The painters of Athenian pottery drew her the same way, sometimes with a second spear, which is the detail the comic poet Cratinus fixed on when he called her dilonchos, the two-speared. Later Greek scholars, puzzling over the word, offered grander readings: two spears for two realms, heaven and earth, or two lights, her own and the one she borrows from the sun. That last gloss is the main reason she is described as a moon goddess. The reliefs show a hunter.

The festival, the Bendideia, fell in the month of Thargelion, at the end of May or the start of June. Two societies kept it, one of Thracians and one of citizens, and the inscriptions preserve the housekeeping. When the marchers from the city reached Piraeus, the Thracian hosts were to meet them with sponges, basins of water, garlands and a meal. After the long dusty road to the coast, the cold water must have felt like the best part of the rite. Then came the sacrifice, the horses and the torches, and a night that nobody was expected to sleep through. On one relief of the later fourth century she shares the stone with a bearded male figure named Deloptes, of whom almost nothing else is known.

No story about her has survived. There is no birth, no parent, no lover, no quarrel with another god, no beast she is said to have killed. For a deity with a state festival that is a striking silence, and it is the honest centre of the subject. What her power was has to be read off what her worshippers did: she was a goddess of the hunt and of the wild ground where hunting happens, a protector strong enough for Aristophanes to call her simply the Great Goddess, and a patron who could bind a scattered migrant people into a body with land, officers and a place in the city’s calendar. Her name may carry that last idea, if the root behind it does mean “to bind”.

Her reach in her own country shows only in scraps. A Roman army crossing Thrace in 188 BC pitched camp beside one of her temples, which Livy names in a single line. Across the straits in Bithynia, a people of Thracian descent named a month of their calendar Bendidios after her. Strabo lists her rites alongside the wild Thracian worship of Dionysus and the Phrygian worship of the Mother, all pipes and frenzy, though he gives no detail that belongs to her alone.

Her limits are those of every god who travels. In Thrace she was a great power. In Athens she was a guest, and her cult lasted exactly as long as the Thracian community and the Athenian interest that kept it funded. No ancient writer places her north of the Danube, either. Her standing as a goddess of the Dacians, common in Romanian writing since the historian Vasile Pârvan in the 1920s, is a modern inference drawn from Roman-era dedications to Diana and from the kinship between Dacians and Thracians. It may be right. No inscription from Dacia carries her name.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Bendis?

Bendis is a Thracian goddess of the hunt, shown as a young woman with spears, boots and a pointed cap. The Greeks compared her to Artemis. She is best known because Athens gave her a sanctuary at Piraeus and a state festival around 430 BC.

What was the Bendideia?

The Bendideia was the Athenian festival of Bendis, held at Piraeus in the month of Thargelion, in late May or early June. It had two processions, one of Thracians and one of Athenian citizens, followed by a sacrifice, a torch relay race on horseback after dark, and an all-night celebration. Plato sets the opening of the Republic on the day of the first one.

Is Bendis a moon goddess?

Bendis is often called a moon goddess, but the evidence for it is thin. It rests mainly on later Greek scholars who explained her title “two-speared” as meaning two lights, her own and one borrowed from the sun. The Athenian reliefs and vase paintings of Bendis show a huntress with spears, not a lunar figure.

Are there any myths about Bendis?

No myth about Bendis has survived. The sources give her no parents, no birth story and no adventures. Everything known about Bendis comes from her cult: inscriptions, carved reliefs, vase paintings and brief mentions by Greek and Roman writers.

Was Bendis a Dacian goddess?

Bendis is securely attested as a Thracian goddess, with worship recorded in Thrace, Athens and Bithynia. No ancient writer and no inscription places her in Dacia, north of the Danube. The idea that Bendis was a Dacian goddess is a modern inference, common in Romanian writing since Vasile Pârvan in the 1920s.