Greece’s frame drum lineage runs in two directions at once. Looking backward, ancient Greece had the tympanon — a hand-held frame drum played mainly by women in the rites of Dionysus, Cybele, and other deities, with the earliest depiction dating to an 8th-century BCE bronze votive disc from Crete. Looking at the living tradition today, the defi (also called daire) is a jingled frame drum still central to folk music from Epirus in the northwest. See the Defi page below.