Mysia
μύσια
Mysia (μύσια), a festival celebrated by the inhabitants of Pellene in Achaia, in honour of Demeter Mysia. The worship of this goddess was introduced at Pellene from a place called Mysia in the neighbourhood of Argos. (Paus. 2.18.3.) The festival of the Mysia near Pellene lasted for seven days, and the religious solemnities took place in a temple, called τὸ μύσαιον, surrounded by a grove. The first two days men and women took part in the celebration together; on the third day the men left the sanctuary, and the women remaining in it performed during the night certain mysterious rites, during which not even male dogs were allowed to remain within the sacred precincts. On the fourth day the men returned to the temple, and men and women now received each other with shouts of laughter and assailed each other with various railleries. (Paus. 7.27.9; Cornutus, de Nat. Deor. 28.)
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.