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.
