Chthonia
χθόνια
Chthonia (χθόνια), a festival celebrated at Hermione in honour of Demeter, surnamed Chthonia (Eur. Her. 608). A description of it is given by Pausanias (2.35.4, &c.), and it is also mentioned by Aelian (Ael. NA 11.4). The Lacedaemonians adopted the worship of Demeter Chthonia from the Hermioneans, some of whose kinsmen had settled in Messenia (Paus. 3.14.5); hence we may infer that they celebrated either the same festival as that of the Hermioneans, or one similar to it.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.