Bendis the Naleli

BENDIS was the ancient Thracian goddess of the moon and hunting who was worshipped in the wilds of Thrake.

The Greeks identified her with the goddesses Artemis, Hekate and Selene. Bendis may have been the same as the Thracian goddess Kotys (Cotys).

BENDIS (Bendis), a Thracian divinity in whom the moon was worshipped. Hesychius (s. v. dilonchon) says, that the poet Cratinus called this goddess dilonchos, either because she had to discharge two duties, one towards heaven and the other towards the earth, or because she bore two lances, or lastly, because she had two lights, the one her own and the other derived from the sun. In Greece she was sometimes identified with Persephone, but more commonly with Artemis. (Proclus, Theolog. p. 353.) From an expression of Aristophanes, who in his comedy "The Lemnian Women" called her the megalê theos (Phot. Lex. and Hesych. s. v.), it may be inferred, that she was worshipped in Lemnos; and it was either from this island or from Thrace that her worship was introduced into Attica; for we know, that as early as the time of Plato the Bendideia were celebrated in Peiraeeus every year on the twentieth of Thargelion. (Hesych. s. v. Bendis; Plat. Rep. i. 1; Proclus, ad Tim. p. 9; Xen. Hell. ii. 4. § 11; Strab. x. p. 471; Liv. xxxviii. 41.)