ORGIES is a name given to certain rites in the worship of Dionysus-Bacchus. The rites, which were restricted to women, were celebrated in the winter among the hills in spots remote from city life. The women met in such places clad in fawn-skins (veβpi<s), with hair dishevelled, swinging the thyrsus and beating the cymbal; they danced and worked themselves up to a state of mad excitement. The holiest rites took place at night by the light of torches. A bull, the representative of the god, was torn in pieces by them as Dionysus-Zagreus had been torn; his bellowing reproduced the cries of the suffering god. The women tore the bull with their teeth, and the eating of the raw flesh was a necessary part of the ritual. Then the dead god was sought for. Some further rites, which varied in different districts, represented the resurrection of the god in the spring. On Mount Parnassus the women carried back Dionysus-Liknites, the child in the cradle. The most famous festival of the kind was the τpιeτηpi<s, celebrated every second winter on Parnassus by the women of Attica and Phocis. The celebrants were called Maenads or Bacchae. The ecstatic enthusiasm of the Thracian women, Kλωδωves or Mι∕zαλλov<s, was especially distinguished. There is no doubt that in earlier times the murdered god was represented by a man, and the myths of Pentheus and Orpheus refer to the original, form of the ritual.