"Dionysus" at night. The Thracian priests who performed the cult of chanted hymns in a Thracian "sacred dialect" which were addressed to the various different personifications of the god, who was given many names reflecting his solar and chthonic aspects, and described his deeds in the celestial, earthly, and chthonic realms. Orgiastic rites In addition to the formal worship at the altar, the common people also carried out worship of and through orgiastic rites in their mountaintop sanctuaries. The participants invoked to inspire them by drinking wine, and once possessed by the god, they ran through the mountain meadows and forests, while carrying torches and shouting the names of the god. himself himself was represented in these rites in the form of a god-mask, which could have animal and floral imagery, and was the ritual equivalent of mythical metamorphosis. These rites were carried out noisily, with nocturnal dances performed to the sound of horses' hooves and Thracian and Asian music played by cymbals, drums, and flutes, and under the light of torches and in the midst of fumes from aromatic seeds dropped in fire. During these rites, women who had dedicated themselves to , known as Maenads or Bacchae, would run barefoot, with snakes hissing in their hair, carrying a thyrsus in one hand and an axe in the other, and they would tear to pieces a sacrificial animal representing Zagreus and eat its flesh and drink its blood. The orgiastic ceremonies of the Edoni to Kottyto were renowned until as far as Asia Minor, and Greek authors noted the similarities between the orgiastic rites to and Kottyto in Thrace and those to Cybele in Phrygia. Other cults Due to the role of the "Dionysian" aspect of as a deity of kingship, an altar dedicated to the god's cult was located in the king's palace and in the house of Thracian aristocrats. Since the ivy was a symbolic plant of the god, these altars were decorated with ivy motifs. Festivals The sacrifice of Zagreus In an annual ritual held every February, a bull representing Zagreus was sacrificed and torn to pieces, and its bloody flesh, standing for Zagreus's own flesh (in his form of Zagreus, was believed to have to suffer since he represented fertility, the rejuvenation of nature and the flowering of life), was consumed by the participants. After rituals of sacred ploughing and sowing were enacted, was summoned