Wild, drunken festivals or orgies; revelries involving excessive drinking and abandonment of normal social rules.
From Latin Bacchanalia, the plural of bacchanale, the annual festival honoring Bacchus. The term originally meant the specific religious festivals but evolved to describe any wild celebration.
The original Bacchanalia festivals were so secretive and riotous that the Roman Senate issued a special decree to suppress them—we know about them mainly from scholars trying to document the 'scandal'!
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