AGRIONIA, an ancient Greek festival, celebrated annually at Orchomenus in Boeotia and elsewhere, in honour of Dionysus Agrionius ("the wild") by women and priests at night. The tra dition is that the daughters of Minyas, king of Orchomenus, having despised the rites of the god, were seized with frenzy and ate the flesh of one of their children. At this festival it was originally the custom for the priest of the god to pursue a woman of the Minyan family with a drawn sword and kill her. (Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. cii., Quaest. Graecae, xxxviii.)