"Bendis" may also refer to Innovation America's Richard A. Bendis

Bendis was a Thracian

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

 goddess of the moon and the hunt whom the Greeks identified with Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

. She was a huntress, like Artemis, but was accompanied by dancing satyrs and maenad

Maenad

In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus , the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

s on a fifth century red-figure stemless cup (at Verona).

By a decree of the oracle of Dodona

Dodona

Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle,...

, which required the Athenians to grant land for a shrine or temple her cult was introduced into Attica by immigrant Thracian residents, and, though Thracian and Athenian processions remained separate, both cult and festival became so popular that in Plato's time (ca. 429-13 BCE) its festivities were naturalized as an official ceremonial of the city-state, called the Bendideia. Among the events were nighttime torch-races on horseback, mentioned in Plato's Republic, 328:

"You haven't heard that there is to be a torchlight race this evening on horseback in honor of the Goddess?” “On horseback?” said I. “That is a new idea. Will they carry torches and pass them along to one another as they race with the horses, or how do you mean?” “That's the way of it,” said Polemarchus, “and, besides, there is to be a night festival which will be worth seeing."

The 'Bendideia' also featured a solemn joint procession of Athenians and Thracians to the Goddess's sanctuary, located at the harbor of Piraeus

Piraeus

Piraeus is a city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens Urban Area, 12 km southwest from its city center , and lies along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf....

. A red-figure cup (skyphos

Skyphos

In classifying the pottery of Ancient Greece, a skyphos is a two-handled deep wine-cup on a low flanged base or none. The handles may be horizontal ear-shaped thumbholds that project from the rim , or they may be loop handles at the rim or that stand away from the lower part of the body...

) (at Tübingen University), of ca 440-430, seems to commemorate the arrival of the newly-authorized cult; it shows Themis (representing traditional Athenian customs) and a booted and cloaked Bendis, who wears a Thracian fox-skin cap.

A small marble votive stele of Bendis, ca. 350-325 BCE, found at Piraeus, (British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, illustration, left) shows the goddess and her worshippers in bas-relief. The image shows that the Thracian goddess has been strongly influenced by Athenian conceptions of Artemis

Artemis

Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

: Bendis wears a short chiton like Artemis, but with an Asiatic snug-sleeved undergarment. She is wrapped in an animal skin like Artemis and has a spear, but has a hooded Thracian mantle, fastened with a brooch. She wears high boots. In the fourth century BCE terracotta figurine at the Louvre (illustration, right) she is similarly attired and once carried a (wooden?) spear.

Elsewhere in Greece, the cult of Bendis did not catch on.

"Just as in all other respects the Athenians continue to be hospitable to things foreign, so also in their worship of the gods; for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites that they were ridiculed for it by comic writers; and among these were the Thracian and Phrygian rites." --Strabo

Strabo

Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...

 Geography (1st Century CE), 10.3.18.

The "Phrygian rites" Strabo mentioned referred to the cult of Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...

 that was also welcomed to Athens in the 5th century.

The Athenians may have been blending the cult of Bendis with the equally Dionysiac Thracian revels of Kotys

Kotys

Kotys or Cotys may refer to:* Kotys * Cotys I , multiple people* Cotys II , multiple people* Cotys III , multiple people* Cotys IV, Odrysian king of Thrace...

, mentioned by Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

. Archaic female cult figures that are unearthed in Thrace or Bulgaria now are identified with Bendis.

Bendida Peak

Bendida Peak

Bendida Peak is the ice-covered peak rising to 1200 m in the north foothills of Detroit Plateau on Trinity Peninsula in Graham Land, Antarctica...

 on Trinity Peninsula

Trinity Peninsula

Trinity Peninsula is the extreme northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula, extending northeastward for about from a line connecting Cape Kjellman and Cape Longing. Dating back more than a century, chartmakers used various names for this portion of the Antarctic peninsula, each name having some...

 in Antarctica is named after the goddess.