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CHRISTOPHER BARON

University of Notre Dame

The Bessans serve as priests at an oracle of DIONYSUS in the territory of the SATRAE, a fierce, mountain‐dwelling Thracian tribe. The sanctuary may be that found at Perperikon in the eastern RHODOPE Mountains. Herodotus notes that the prophetess delivers her ORACLES in the same fashion as the one at DELPHI (7.111.2). By Roman times, the Bessans fully controlled the sanctuary, but they were stripped of it during the reign of Augustus (Graninger 2015, 26–27). STRABO (7.5.12/C318) refers to the Bessans in unflattering terms; like other Thracian tribes they were noted for their height (Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 2.231, immanes Bessi; Sears 2013, 256–57). If the text of Pliny the Elder is correct in referring to the “Diobessi” (HN 4.40), the Bessans may have been related to the Dians who, while serving as Athenian ALLIES during the PELOPONNESIAN WAR, brutally attacked the city of Mycalessus (Thuc. 7.29–30).

SEE ALSO: Priests and Priestesses; Thrace