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HYBRISTICA

Volume 11 · 148 words · 1842 Edition

(of ἴδρα, injury), in Antiquity, a solemn feast held amongst the Greeks, with sacrifices and other ceremonies, at which the men attended in the apparel of women, and the women in that of men, to do honour to Venus in quality either of a god or a goddess, or both. But, according to the account given by others, the hybristica was a feast celebrated at Argos, in which the women, being dressed like men, insulted their husbands, and treated them with all marks of superiority, in memory of the Argive dames having anciently defended their country with singular courage against Cleomenes and Demaratus. Plutarch speaks of this feast in his treatise of the great actions of women. The name, he observes, signifies infamy, and is well accommodated to the occasion, in which the women strutted about in men's clothes, whilst the men were obliged to dangle in petticoats.