Maiuma (festival)

Maiuma or Maiouma, also written with a final s, was a Graeco-Syrian nocturnal water festival celebrating Dionysus and Aphrodite and held during the month of May-Artemisios. According to Malalas (Chronicle 284–285), it was celebrated in Antioch every three years as a nocturnal festival, also known as Orgies, or the Mysteries of Dionysus and Aphrodite. Its most famous venue was Daphne-by-Antioch (Daphne, a suburb of the Hellenistic metropolis  on the Orontes). Aquatic displays, mime and dance shows made the festival very popular in several cities of the East Roman Empire. There are scholars who distinguish between the original Graeco-Syrian festival, characterised by two main components, water and rejoicing, and later celebrations of similar character from the pagan Graeco-Roman and even the Christian Byzantine world, which also adopted the original name. The celebrations were so licentious that some Roman rulers attempted to ban them.