Metageitnia
μεταγείτνια
Metageitnia (μεταγείτνια,), a festival celebrated by the Attic demos Melite, in honour of Apollo Metageitnios. The chief solemnities consisted in offering sacrifices, and the festival was believed to commemorate the emigration (γειτνίασις πρὸς ἑτέρους) of the inhabitants of Melite to Diomis. (Plut. de Exil. § 6; comp. Suidas and Harpocrat. s. v. Μεταγειτνιών.) But it seems not improbable that the institution of this festival is connected with the extension of the worship of Apollo so as to embrace all classes, under the influence of Epimenides (cf. Curtius, Hist. of Greece, 1.323). The idea of migration in the worship of Apollo is indicated in the story of Ion, and from that idea may come the title Metageitnios given to Apollo and thence to the Attic month.
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.