BENDIS
a Thracian divinity in whom the moon was worshipped. Hesychius says "that the poet Cratinus called this goddess Two Spears, 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.
From an expression of Aristophanes, who in his comedy "The
Lemnian Women", 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.