festivals or orgies in honour of Bacchus, which were introduced by the Greeks of Southern Italy into Etruria and Rome. These festivals, which had been celebrated among the Greeks with great merriment, degenerated among the Romans into practices of hideous licentiousness and immorality, which were generally carried on at night and in secret. In the year B.C. 186 their existence was discovered by the Roman magistrates, and strict inquiries were instituted. The numerous crimes committed at these nocturnal orgies induced the senate to issue an order forbidding the celebration of the Bacchanalia both at Rome and in Italy. This order (Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus), which is mentioned by Livy and Cicero, was discovered, in 1640, at Bari in Southern Italy, engraved upon a brazen table, from which it has frequently been copied, as in Drakenborch's edition of Livy, in Donaldson's Varroianus, and elsewhere.

The Greeks called the festivals of Bacchus Dionysia Lenaea, Anthesteria, which were celebrated at different seasons of the year, and at which the dramatic poets produced their new tragedies and comedies in the Dionysiac theatre in Athens. See Dr Schmitz's article Dionysia in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.