# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thesmophoria

See also Thesmophoria on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​THESMOPHORIA, an ancient Greek festival, celebrated by women only in honour of Demeter 9e¢r, u, o1;6pos. At Athens, Abdera, and perhaps Sparta, -it lasted three days. At Athens the festival took place on the rrth, 12th and 13th of the month ​ Pyanepsion (24th, 2 5th and 26th October), the first day being called Anodos (ascent), or, according to others, Kathodos (descent), the second Nesteia (fast), and the third Kalligeneia (fair-born).1 If to these days we add the Thesmophoria, which were celebrated on the 10th at Halimus, a township on the coast near Athens, the festival lasted four days.” If further we add the festival of the Stenia, which took place on the 9th, the whole festival lasted five days? The Stenia are said by Photius to have celebrated the return of Demeter from the lower world (Anodos), and the women railed at each other by nights* The Thesmophoria at Halimus seem to have included dances on the beach.5 The great feature of the next day (the Anodos) is generally assumed to have been a procession from Halimus to Athens, but this assumption seems to rest entirely on an interpretation of the name Anodos, and it loses all probability when we observe that the day was by others called Kathodosfi Probably both names referred to the descent of Demeter or Persephone to the nether world, and her ascent from it." The next day Nesteia, was a day of sorrow, the women sitting on the ground and fasting.” As to what took place on the Kalligeneia we have no information.” Nor can we define the time or nature of the secret ceremony called the “ pursuit, ” or the “ Chalcidian pursuit, ” and the sacrifice called the “ penalty.”1°
During the Thesmophoria (and for nine days previously, if Ovid, Met., x. 434, is right, and refers to the Thesmophoria) the women abstained from intercourse with their husbands, and to fortify themselves strewed their beds with Agnus caslus and other plants. The women of Miletus strewed their beds with pine branches, and put fir-cones in the sanctuaries of Demeter.11 Whether unmarried women were admitted to the festival seems doubtful; in Lucian's time it would appear that 1[Or, mother of a fair daughter, i.e. Persephone] Schol. on Aristo h., Thesmnphoriazusae, 80 and 585; Diog. Laert., ix. 43; Hesychius, s.v. rpu/"repos (the reading here is uncertain) and Iivoéos; Alciphron, iii. 39; Athenaeus, vii. 307 f. Plutarch (Vit. Demosth., 30) states that the Nesteia took place on the 16th of Pyanepsion, but in this he stands alone.
1 Schol. on Aristoph., Thesm., 80; Photius, Lex., s.v. 9eapo¢»oplwv iynépat 6' (where Naber should not have altered the MS. reading 5' into t6'); Hesychius, s.v. fpir-q 9ea;.w¢op£wv.
3 Schol. on Aristoph., Thesm., 834.
4 Photius, Lex., s.v. ariyvza; cf. Apollodorus, i. 5, 1. 5 Plut., Solon, 8; for this passage probably refers to the Thesmophoria, the Cape Colias mentioned being near Halimus (see Erldutemder Text to the Karlen van Atlika, ii. 1 sq.). The Thesmophorion at Halimus is mentioned by Pausanias (i. 31, 1). 5 Hesychius (s.v. auabos) and the Schol. on Arist., T hesm., 585, suppose that the day was so called because the women ascended to the Thesmophorion, which (according to the scholiast) stood on a height. But no ancient writer mentions a procession from Halimus. For the name Kathodas, see Schol., loc. eil.; Photius, Lex., s.v. 9¢ap.o¢>op£wv -f;népa.|. 6'. For the statement that at one part of the festival (commonly assumed, by the writers who accept the statement, to be the Anodos) the women carried on their heads the “books of the law, " we have only the authority of the scholiast on Theocritus, iv. 25, who displays his ignorance b describing the women as virgins (see below), and saying that they went in procession to Eleusis. The statement may therefore be dismissed as an etymological fiction. Aristophanes, Eccles., 222, is no evidence for the book-carrying.
7The Boeotian festival of Demeter, which was held at about the same time as the Athenian Thesmophoria, and at which the megara (see below) were opened, is distinctly stated b Plutarch (De Is. el Osir., 69) to have been a mourning for the descent (Kathodos) of Perse hone.
11Plut., Dem., 30; ld., De Is. elOsi1., 69. 9 [lt was a day of holiday and rejoicing]
1"llesychius, s.v. éiarypa [perhaps the pursuit of Persephone]; Suidas, s.v. Xahctburév éiw-ypa [according to whom, the prayers of the women at the Thesmophoria caused the flight of the enemy to Chalcisl; Hesychius, s.v. fqpla. For flight and pursuit as parts of religious ceremonies, cf. Plutarch, Quaesr. Grace., 38, Quaest. Rom., 63, De Def. Orac., 15; Aelian, Nat. An., xii. 34; Pausanias, i. 24, 4, viii. 53, 3; Diodorus, i. 91; Lobeck, Aglaophamus (1829), p. 676; Marquardt, Stautsverwaltung, 2nd ed. (1885), 111. 323.
11 Aelian, Nat. An., ix. 26; Schol. on Theocr., iv. 25; Hesychius s.v. xvéwpov; Pliny, N. H., 24, 59; Dioscorides, i. 135 (134, ed. Sprengel); Schol. on Nicander, Ther., 70 sq.; Galen, xi. 808, ed. Kuhn; Steph. Byz., s.v. Mikqros. »
they were." The women of each deme (township) elected two married women of their number to preside over them at the festival; and every married man in the township who possessed property to the value of three talents had to provide a feast for the women on behalf of his wife.” During the festival the women seem to have been lodged by twos in tents or huts, probably erected within the sacred precincts of the Thesmophorion." They were not allowed to eat the seeds of the pomegranate or to wear garlands of flowers.” Prisoners were released at the festival,1' and during the N esteia the law-courts were closed and the senate did not meet." Aristophanes's play on the festival sheds little light on the mode of its celebration. V
At Thebes Thesmophoria were celebrated in summer on the acropolis (Cadmeia); at Eretria during the Thesmophoria the women cooked their meat, not at fires, but by the heat of the sun, and they did not invoke Kalligeneia (which seems to mean that they did not celebrate the last day of the festival); at Syracuse, during the festival, cakes called mylloi, made of sesame and honey in the shape of pudemla muliebria, were handed round." Agrigentum, Ephesus and Dryme, in Phocis, had also their Thesmophoria.”
The above was nearly all that was known about the Thesmophoria down to 1870. In that year E. Rohde published in the Rheinisches Museum, n.s., xxv., p. 548 sq., a scholion on Lucian (Dial. Merelr., ii. 1), which he discovered in the Vatican MS. Palatinus 73, and which furnishes some curious details about the Thesmophoria. It also explains two obscure and corrupt passages of Clemens Alexandrinus and Pausanias, the true meaning of which had been divined by Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 828). The substance of the scholion is this. When Persephone was carried off by Pluto, a swineherd called Eubuleus was herding his swine at the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto had vanished with Persephone. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria it was customary, in memory of Eubuleus, to fling pigs into the "chasms of Demeter and Persephone.” (These ' chasms" may have been natural caverns or perhaps vaults. The scholiast speaks of them also as adyta and megara.'°) In these chasms or adyta there were supposed to be serpents, which guarded the adyta and consumed most of the flesh 'of the pigs that were thrown in. The decayed remains of the flesh were afterwards fetched by women called “ drawers " (antlelriai), who, after observing rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns, and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the remains and placed them on the altars.” Whoever got a portion of this decayed flesh and sowed it with the seed in the 11 Lucian, Dial. Merelr., ii. 1. On the other hand, we read in Strabo (i. 3, 20) of virgins at Alponus ascending a tower as spectators (xa-rd. 6éa.v) of the Thesmophoria. which would seem to imply that they did not participate in it.
13 Isaeus, De Ciromfs Hered., 19; Id., De Pyrrhi Hered., 80. 14 Aristoph., Thesm., 624, 658, with the Schol. ad ll. As to the custom of camping out at festivals, Plutarch (Quaest. Com/iv., iv, 6, 2) compares the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles with the Greek Dionysia; from which we may perhaps infer that the worshippers camped out at the Dionysia. Cr. J. Gumilla, Histoire de l'0fénague, 1. p. 256 sq. [1758].
15 Clem. Alex., Protrep., ch. 11. [p. 16, ed. Potterl; Schol. on Sophocles, Oed. Col., 681.
1° Marcellinus on Hermogenes, in Rhetores Graeei, ed. Walz, iv. 462; Sopater, ibid., viii. 67. "
17 Aristoph., Thesm., 80. The word -rpin; seems to mean the Nesteia, as the Schol. ad l. takes it. That the “ middle day ” was the Nesteia we know from Athenacus, vii. 307 f. 11 Xenophon, Hellen., v. 2, 29; Plutarch, Qiiaest. Gr., 31; Athenaeus, xiv. 647a.
1” Polyaenus, v. 1, 1; Herodotus, vi. 16; Pausanias, x. 33, II.
1° C. T. Newton discovered in the sanctuary of Demeter and the Infernal Deities at Cnidus a chamber which may have been one of the megara referred to by the scholiast. It contained bones of pigs and marble figures of pigs. The chamber was not, however, originally subterranean. See Newton's Discoveries at Halicarnassus (1863), ii. p. 383, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (1865), ii. p. 180 sq. According to Porphyry (De Antro Nympharum, 6) the Infernal Deities had megara, as the Olympian had temples, and the sacrificial pits of the former corresponded to the altars of the latter.
21 Compare the functions of the 'two Arrephoroi at Athens § Paus., 27, 3). For serpents in connexion with Demeter, compare trabo, ix. 1, 9. ​ground was supposed thereby to secure a good crop! The rest of the scholion is obscure, and perhaps corrupt, but the following seems to be the sense. The ceremony above described was called the arretophoria [the carrying of things which must not be spoken of], and was supposed to exercise the same quickening and fertilizing influence on men as on fields. Further, along with the pigs, sacred cakes made of dough, in the sha of serpents and of phalli, were cast into the caverns, to symbolise the productivity of the earth and of man. Branches of pines were thrown in' for a similar reason.
The custom described in this important scholion is clearly the same as that referred to by Clemens Alexandrinus (Protrep, ch. ii.) p. 14, ed. Potter] and Pausanias (ix. 8, 1). From the latter we learn that the pigs were sucking pigs, and from the former (if we adopt Lobeck's emendation, ufydpots § '<'I.»v-ras for pfyapifowes) that they were thrown in alive. From Pausanias we may further perhaps infer (though the passage is corrupt) that the remains of the pigs thrown down in one year were not fetched up till the same time next year (cf. Paus., x. 32, 14). The question remains, At what point of the Thesmophoria did the ceremony described by the scholiast on Lucian take place? Rohde thinks that it formed part of the ceremonies at Halimus, his chief ground being that Clemens (Protrep., 34) and Arnobius (Adv. Gentes, v. 28) mention phalli in connexion with the “mysteries at Halimus ”; but it is not certain that these mysteries were the Thesmophoria. The legend 'oft Eubuleus seems to show that the ceremony commemorated the descent of Persephone to the nether world; and, if we are right in our interpretation of the name Kathodos as applied to the first da of the Thesmo horia proper, the ceremony described would naturally fall on that d)ay. Further, if our interpretation of Pausanias is correct, the same day must have witnessed the descent of the living pigs and the ascent of the rotten pork of the previous year. Hence the day might be indifferently styled Kathodos or Anodos (“ descent " or “ ascent ”); and so in fact it was.
It is usual to interpret Thesmophorus “ lawgiver ” and Thesmophoria “ the feast of the lawgiver." But the Greek for “ lawgiver " is not Thesmophorus but Thesmothetes (or Nomothetes, when nomos displaced lhesmos in the sense of “law ). If we compare such names of festivals as Oschophoria, Lampadephoria, Hydrophoria, Scirophoria (“ the carrying of grapes, of torches, of water, of umbrellas ) with the' corresponding Oschophorus, Lampadephorus, Hydrophorus, also Thallophorus and Kanephorus, we can scarcely help concluding that Thesmophoria must originally have meant in the literal and physical sense the carrying of the thesmai, and Thesmophorus the person who so carried them; and, in view of the ceremony disclosed by the scholiast on Lucian (compared with the analo 'ous ceremony observed by the Arrephoroi at Athens), we are strongiy tem ted to suppose that the women whom he calls Antletriai may fiave been also known, at one time or other, as Thesmo horoi, and that the thesrnoi were the sacra which they carried and) deposited on the altar. The word would then be used in its literal sense, “that which is set down.” How the name Thesmophorus should have been transferred to the goddess from her ministers is of course a difficulty, which is hardly disposed of by pointing to the epithets Amallophorus (“ sheaf-bearing ”) and Melophorus (“ apple-bearing ”), which were applied to men as well as to the goddess.
As to the origin of the Thesmophoria, Herodotus (ii. 171) asserts that they were introduced into Greece from Egypt by the daughters of Danaus; while, according to Plutarch (Fragments, p. 55, ed. Diibner [Frag. Incerta, 841), the feast was introduced into Athens by Orpheus the Odrysian. From these statements we can only infer the similarity of the Thesmophoria to the Orphic rites and to the Egyptian representation of the sufferings of Osiris, in connexion with which Plutarch mentions them. The Thesmophoria would thus form one of that class of rites, widely spread in Western Asia and in Europe, in which the main feature appears to be a lamentation for the annual decay of vegetation or a rejoicing at its revival. This seems to have been the root, e.g., of the lamentations for Adonis and Attis. See W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feld-Kulte, . 264 sq.
On the Tliesmophoria, see Meursius, Graecia Feriata, p. 151 sq.; L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone (1837), p. 335 sq., Griech. Myth., 3], i. p. 639 sq.; Fritzsche's ed. of the Thesmophoriazusae (1838), p. 577 sq.; Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (1864), p. 287 sq.; Rheinisches Museum, xxv. (1870), p. 548; Gazette Archéologique (1880), p. 17; Andrew Lang, “ Demeter and the Pig, " in Nineteenth Century, April 1887; j. G. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 44; J. E.
1 This, as Andrew Lang has pointed out, resembles the Khond custom of burying the flesh of the human victim in the fields to fertilize them. The human victim was with the Khonds, like the pig with the Greeks, a sacrifice to the Earth goddess. See M ernarials of Service -in India . . of Major S. C. Macpherson, ed. William Macpherson (1865), p. 129.
2 Reading éuBd)}ou<n, with Rohde, for Rau/Sévoum. Compare the custom of Miletus supra. The pine-tree played an important part in the worship of Cybele. Cf. Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung (1385), iii. 371.l
Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903); and especially the exhaustive articles by L. C. Purser in Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities (ed. 3, 1891) and by F. Lenormant (on Ceres) in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités. (J. G. Fr.; X.)