Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. New Light on Demeter's Mysteries: The Festival Proerosia Robertson, Noel Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1996; 37, 4; ProQuest pg. 319 New Light on Demeter's Mysteries: The Festival Proerosia Noel Robertson D EMETER'S "MYSTERIES: festivals conducted mainly by women and in sanctuaries that were suitably withdrawn, were almost universal in Greek cities, like the cereal agri­ culture they were intended to promote. They were integral to Greek society and are now widely and profitably studied as a social phenomenon. If the general custom is important, so are the many ritual actions that constitute a given festival, through which (according to one's point of view) the women either worship the goddess Demeter, or work directly on the earth, or affirm their sense of the fitness of things. Animal sacrifice plays a large part, as usual, the pig species being favored by De­ meter, and there is a peculiar practice of throwing piglets into a pit, which is then closed. It is a disadvantage that reconstructions of ritual must be sought in older handbooks and special studies. The basic work on Greek festivals was done long ago, and new evidence, though not wholly neglected, has not led to any sustained effort of revision. The festival Proerosia, "Before-ploughing (rites)," is such a case. The Athenian, or Eleusinian, version of this festival once seemed to stand alone, as if it were something secondary and contrived, without much bearing on the larger pattern of Demeter's worship. We can now see that the Proerosia was widespread. It may have been as common as the greatest of Demeter's festivals, the Thesmophoria: it was a sequel to it, coming later in the autumn season. The ritual of the Thesmo­ phoria, which also included throwing piglets into a pit, cannot be understood without reference to the sequel. It is worth assembling the evidence for the Proerosia in detail. Our reconstruction must proceed from the better known to the lesser. So the Eleusinian Proerosia come first (I-VIII infra). Much more can be usefully said about it than in the handbooks, mostly in the light of Athenian inscriptions, especially the "sac­ red calendar" of Eleusis. Then the instances in Attic demes 319 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA (IX-XI), vestiges in the city of Athens (XII), and similarly named festivals in other parts of Greece (XIII). After investi­ gating the festival by name, we can recognize a description with­ out the name, in a scholium on Lucian (XIV-XVI). The most important conclusion will be that men as well as women have a share in Demeter's ritual; the Mysteries of Eleusis are by no means exceptional in this respect (XVII). I. The Proerosia in Classical Athens The Eleusinian Proerosia were adopted by Athens at an early date, just like the Mysteries: it too is spoken of in legend as an Athenian festival. 1 The civic celebration was on a considerable scale and took place entirely at Eleusis, except for a proclama­ tion in the city (III infra). Euripides (Supp. 1-4,28-31) feigns that Aethra, as Athens' queen mother, was officiating at Eleusis when the mothers of the Seven sought her out. In the Hellen­ istic period the ephebes hoist sacrificial oxen, as they do also at the Mysteries. 2 Most impressively, this is the occasion, both in legend and in the undoubted practice of imperial Athens, for garnering aparchai ("first fruits") from far and wide. The festival commemorates the very beginning of agriculture. According to the Parian Marble, it was founded when Demeter came to Athens and instructed Triptolemus; it is even prior to the Mysteries (FGrHist 239AI2-15).3 The Proerosia were insti­ tuted in the autumn, and Triptolemus reaped the first crop the next summer. It was a full ten years later, after Orpheus had ex­ pounded the pertinent ritual, that the Mysteries were founded by Eumolpus. Demeter also sent Triptolemus on a mission to the rest of the world, which is depicted in both black-figure and I J. D. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year (Princeton 1975) 68, argues that it was only a deme festival; D. WHITEHEAD, The Demes of Attica 50B17-ca 250 B.C. (Princeton 1986: hereafter 'White­ head') 197, leaves the question open; R. SMARCZYK, Untersuchungen zur Religionspolitik und politischen Propaganda Athens im delisch-attischen Seebund (Munich 1990: 'Smarczyk') 189 n.88, rightly takes exception. 2 IGIF 1006.9£, 79; 1028 (SIG3 717) lines 28f; 1029.16£; 1039.54f. 3 Kat 1tP[o11poO"ia t]1tpa[xe" 1tP]wtll, o[d~avto<;/ T]pl1ttOA£J.10U KtA. (A12). "Munro's fine emendation may be described as absolutely certain": F. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium (Berlin 1904) 61. So too rAe!. Arist. 3.55 Dindorf. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 321 red-figure painting, and was somehow presented in an early play of Sophocles.4 Triptolemus then is the founding hero of the festival and even its eponym, for his name was thought to signify the threefold ploughing of the formula VdWl tVl 'tPl1tOf.,Wl. The ancient etymol­ ogy may well be right, whatever the significance of that three­ fold ploughing-or perhaps rather, that triple furrowing. s In art Triptolemus is but rarely seen with a literal bag of seed and a literal plough.6 Instead, he holds several ears of grain, or is about 4 G. Schwarz, Triptolemos. Ikonographie einer Agrar- und Mysteriengott­ heit (Graz 1987); T. Hayashi, Bedeutung und Wandel des Triptolemosbildes 'Vom 6.-4. Jhs. 'V. Chr. (Wiirzburg 1992); Soph. Triptolemus frr. 596-617a. Schwarz (7-27) sets out the literary sources who refer to Triptolemus' mission by name. It is also presupposed whenever Athens is said to have imported the gift of grain: in the fourth century, PI. Men. 237E-238A; Isoc. 4 (Paneg.) 28f; Dem. 60 (Epit.) 5; Demetr. Phal. fro 185 Wehrli. Smarczyk (supra n.1: 175-78) assembles further indications. 5 According to M. Nilsson ("Die eleusinischen Gottheiten," ArchRW 32 (1935) 84 [= Opuscula Selecta II (Lund 1952)] 549), folk etymology first associated TPl1t'tOM:JlO~ with 'tpi1tOAo~; this was a good heroic name with some other meaning. But linguists do not agree on another meaning: see the etymological dictionaries of Frisk and Chantraine S.'V. Tpl1t'tOAEJ.10~. A. D. Nock, "The Cult of Heroes," in Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford 1972) II 575~02 at 579 n.21 (=HThR 37 [1944]), was more likely right to describe him as "a subordinate deity humanized by mythology." He would not in any case be singled out in Hymn. Hom. Cer., which ignores Demeter's festivals apart from the Mysteries. The real difficulties seem to be that ltOAtlV vis-a-vis UpoUv is to till the ground without sowing it, as was done at other times in the year, and that 'tPl-. which might be intensive rather than specific, points to this extended procedure: a "thrice­ tilling" hero is not then apt for the ploughing festival. The difficulties are removed and the name is apt indeed if the autumn ritual called for the ploughing of three furrows by some officiant. So E. A. Armstrong, "The Triple­ Furrowed Field," CR 57 (1943) 4, adducing ceremonies of this kind from India and China. There are supporting indications. The coupling of Demeter and Iasion Vdrol EVl. 'tPlltOAOH is generally taken to reflect a fertility ritual; if so, the phrase should designate a spot that has just been prepared. Produs on Hesiod quotes an Eleusinian song for the sowing that ends tPlltOA£OV OE (PMC 877). Though the words will not be quite right as transmitted ('tpl.~ ltOAOOOOlV Bergk, tpiltOAoV Otl or tplltOAElV oEl Wilamowitz), this is inde­ pendent evidence for some such term in the proper context. 6 On a red-figure krater Demeter holds a plough as Triptolemus sets off (ARV2 1036.12; Schwarz [supra nA] 48f); on a Boeotian skyphos Triptolemus holds it (Schwarz 55); on the tazza Farnese he has plough-pole, plough-share, and bag of seed (Schwarz 59); on another gem he grasps the plough-handle (Schwarz 60); on the Pietraossa cup he holds two ploughs (Schwarz 62); on a Roman stucco relief he has a plough (Schwarz 69). In many other works he is shown in the act of strewing seed. See Cook, Zeus I 222ff; Nilsson (supra n.5) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 322 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA to take them from Demeter, and rides in a snake-drawn chariot. This strange vehicle signifies the effort or skill of the plough­ man. When Triptolemus on his mission came to 'Apoll ("Ploughland") in Achaea, a native youth yoked the snakes and attempted to plough on his own, but was thrown and killed (Paus.7.18.3). The Proerosia are further extolled as the remedy for the uni­ versal famine that Demeter inflicted in her sorrow; the rest of Greece, and even barbary, joined in offering aparchai. 7 Lycur­ gus in his Delian oration told how Apollo prescribed the rem­ edy, so that his servant Abaris, a Hyperborean, was the first to bring aparchai. 8 Apollo's command was reasserted on one or more occasions by the Delphic oracle. 9 The authority of Delphi is cited, together with ancestral custom, in an Athenian decree of the later fifth century, which makes practical arrangements for collecting the aparchai. The actual collection of aparchai is known from this decree, another of the mid-fourth century, and the accounts of the Eleu­ sinian epistatai for 329/328; it was somehow revived under Hadrian.10 The Proerosia are never mentioned by name. But as the aparchai of legend are destined for this festival, so they must be too in real life. 11 The decrees and the accounts refer to a sacri- 548f; M. H. Jameson, "The Hero Echetlaeus," TAPA 82 (1951) 60f. Schwarz (248) rather discounts these attributes, saying that in Attica the plough be­ longs to Demeter and its use to other heroes; but this is arbitrary. 7 Isoc. 4 (Paneg.).31; Lycurg. Menesaechmus, FCrHist 401cFl-4,9=frr. 82-85, 90 Conomis; cf Hypereides, FCrHist 401bF9; Hippostratus, FCrHist 568F4; Ael. Arist. Panath. 1.167f Dindorf; Eleus. 1.417. 8 So Lycurgus, Hyperides, Hippostratus (supra n.7); Crates, FCrHist 362F1; etc. In the original conception Abaris as Apollo's servant belongs to the purely mythical past, as do the Hyperborean maidens who served Artemis, and who likewise came with wheat sheaves from their northern home, in Mediter­ ranean eyes the source of all fertilizing moisture (Hdt. 4.33.3-35). Subsequently Abaris was associated with Pythagoras and historical places and events, and a controversy arose about his date. 9 So Isocrates (supra n.7) quite explicitly; IC P 78.4f, 26, 34; also IC IF 5006, aet. Hadr., on which see n.12! infra. 10 IC P 78, "ca. a. 422?"; IC IF 140 (SIC) 300, LSCC Supp!. 13), a. 353/352; 1672.263-300, a. 329/328; 2956-57, aet. Hadr. 11 J. E. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley 1978) 295, followed by M. B. Cavanaugh, Eleusis and Athens. Documents in Finance, Religion and Politics in the Fifth Century B.C. (Atlanta 1996) 87, postulates two sorts of oracles and two sorts of offerings: supposed ploughtime offerings for "De­ meter Proerosia" at Athens, and supposed harvest offerings for Eleusinian de- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 323 fice of animals funded from the aparchai (II infra), the accounts also to much smaller offerings (VI); this is obviously a festival, the Proerosia. Surprisingly, the Proerosia are seldom men­ tioned by commentators on the fifth-century decree. Instead, we are often told to think of other festivals, whether the Eleusinia of Metageitnion or the Mysteries of Boedromion. 12 Yet the decree plainly shows that the deadline for the aparchai is considerably later than the Mysteries, when a call goes out to the whole Greek world. In the text of the decree the call is inserted half-way through the practical arrangements: KEA£Uf:to OE Kat ho htEPOq>UVtE~ Kat ho OatOOXo~ Jluo'tEpiot~ U1tuPXEo8at 'to~ hfAA£va~ 'to Kap1tO (IG P 78.24f: "The Hierophant and the Torch-bearer at the Mysteries shall call upon the Greeks to make offerings of first fruits of the grain"). This will be part of their customary proc­ lamation in Athens on the first day of the Mysteries, 15 Boe­ dromion, for there was no other opportunity to address the Greeks at large. In the late fourth century Eleusis' sacred calen­ dar records a similar call on 5 Pyanopsion, about three weeks later (III infra). The call on that date was in fact traditional. While the decree was in force, it was either superseded or supplemented by the call at the Mysteries. ities. This is plainly wrong, but Fontenrose is right to query the term aparchai for offerings of grain that are traditionally destined for an autumn festival. We shall come to this below (VIII). 12 Comment on the decree has not kept pace with our understanding of Athenian festivals. A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (Leipzig 1898) 179-204, equated the Proerosia with the agonistic Eleusinia and assigned the composite festival to Boedromion, mainly because of the name «Proarcturia,» which he associated with the morning rising of Arcturus in September. (He had once preferred the month Pyanopsion and the evening setting: 194 n.S.) Mommsen's once influential view is still sometimes followed, even by Meiggs and Lewis (from whom we all first imbibe the pure milk of Greek in­ scriptions), who say (p.221) that the deadline for the aparchai is "probably ... during the Eleusinia in the month Boedromion.» It is however obsolete: the Eleusinia are now assigned to Metageitnion, and the Proerosia are seen to be quite distinct. A more recent attempt to link the aparchai with the Eleusinia of Metageitnion is refuted by A. C. Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the Agricultural Year (New York 1981) 184-88. They are linked with the Mysteries by Smarczyk (184-216). Other objections aside, IG P 78.24f (quoted and translated below) cannot mean that the Hierophant and the Torch-bearer will call on the Greeks at an unspecified time, and that the offerings will be delivered at the Mysteries. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 324 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA Th~ practical arrangements begin much earlier-in the spring, when the decree was issued-and continue throughout the summer. The decree requires each allied city to appoint col­ lectors locally and ship the grain to Athens and obtain a receipt (lG P 78.14-24,26-30). In this first year they will be notified by heralds; a rider to the decree intercalates a second Hecatom­ baeon so as to give more time (lines 53f). In 329/328 aparchai were collected by Athenian generals from all the Aegean islands that Athens still possessed (/G IF 1672.275-79).13 The shipment from Imbros arrived too late for "the sacrifice," i.e., the festival (lines 297ff). By the mid-fourth century the aparchai were regulated by "the law of Chaeremonides" (lG IF 140.8ff, 33f); it too must have laid down procedure in the manner of the earlier decree.14 Cleidemus, writing about this time, reports an alternative name for the Proerosia: IIpoapK"COupta ("Before-Arcturus [rites]").15 The reference can only be to the morning rising in early or mid­ September, not to the evening setting nearly two months later, for that sign was little noticed, compared with the setting of the Pleiades.16 Early or mid-September is too early even for the call 13 Brumfield (supra n.12: 185) mistakenly says that the aparchai were sold in the tenth prytany (as in the heading of line 216). The collection and sale are not dated by prytany, and doubtless took place in the summer and autumn of 329. 14 The aparchai are also referred to in statutes of this period that were posted in the Eleusinium: A. G. Woodhead, Inscriptions: The Decrees (Athenian Agora 6 [1977]) nos. 56B a 13, 57.3, both" ante med. saec. IVa." In the time of the second empire, from the 370s onward, Athens publicized Eleusis' festivals once more, chiefly the Mysteries but also the Proerosia. Triptolemus appears on Panathenaic vases and on a new bronze coinage; on vases and in literature gods and heroes come to Eleusis to be initiated; new laws are posted in Athens' Eleusinium, and new construction is started in the great sanctuary. See K. Clinton, "The Eleusinian Mysteries and Panhellenism in Democratic Athens," in W. Coulson et al., edd., The Archaeology of Athens and Attica under the Democracy (Oxford 1994) 169. 15 Cleidemus, FGrHist 323F23. "Cleidemus" is a likely but not certain emen­ dation. Whoever the authority, it is a name for the civic Proerosia. At IG P 232A20f,a. 510-480, regulations at Athens' Eleusinium, the supplement [- -­ TIpoapK't]oup/tot[crt- - -] (Hicks) is merely one possibility, and there is no context. 16 The morning rising is anciently assigned to 5, 12, or 15 September: F. Boll and W. Gundel, "Sternbilder," M L 6 (1937) 885. Arcturus has not much to do with cereal agriculture. The rising is a sign for ploughing light soil (Verg. G. 1.67f), as the setting is for sowing vetch, a counterfoil to cereals (Plin. HN 18.137). According to rGerm. Arat. p.169 Breysig, .. Icarus," i.e., Arcturus, is honored at Athens with first fruits of both harvest and vintage, de frugibus et Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 325 at the Mysteries, in mid-Boedromion. The term indicates that the aparchai from abroad were expected to come in before the perilous sailing of autumn, signalled by Arcturus. "Before-Arc­ turus (rites)" are not then the festival itself, but the gathering of aparchai; this variation of the name is probably sarcastic. So in Athens' great days the aparchai were collected through a prolonged secular effort that did not wait on any ceremony. The date and purpose of the Proerosia festival must be deter­ mined from other evidence. II. The Sacrifices The festival was especially noted for its sacrifice of animals. The very name is given as both 1tPOTJpOOlCl (h:pa) ("Before­ ploughing [rites]") and 1tpoTJpoota (8uota ) ("Before-ploughing [sacrifice]").17 Most festival names are neuter plural, referring to the "rites." If our name sometimes refers to the "sacrifice," a more specific element, it is because the sacrifice overshadowed the rest. In the opening scene of Supplices Aethra is engaged in sacrificing (29, 1tp08uoucra) and stands beside the altars of De­ meter and Kore (33f, cf 63f, 93, 290). In the fifth and fourth cen­ turies the sacrifice was paid for out of the aparchai, and accord­ ingly varied in extent; in 329/328 there were forty-three sheep and goats and three oxen. 18 The aparchai decrees give further details. The sacrifice goes to two triads of Eleusinian deities: to 'lJindemia, but it is clear that the vintage alone has suggested this. In a catas­ terism Arcturus is a son of Demeter, Philomelus, whom she bore to Iasion, her partner in the furrows, and who invented the plough (Hermippus fro 99 Wehr­ li; Petellides, FCrHist 464F1). Yet these fancies had little warrant; Gemini can be lasion and Triptolemus. Cf Boll and Gundel 887f, 891 on Philomelus (they wrongly infer Egyptian influence), 951 on Iasion and Triptolemus. 17 The ephebic inscriptions have 1tPOllpOOpOlV in lines 25-26), and line 1 had ample space for this one, and at the beginning of line 2 the lacuna is of considerably more than two letters. 41 So Lycurg. Menesaechmus, FGrHist 40lcFI =fr. 82 Conomis; Crates, FGrHist 362Ft. 42 Dow and Healey 6; Roux 563; Richardson (supra n.32) 277; Clinton (supra n.33) 22; Mikalson (supra n.l) 68; Whitehead 196. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 334 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA series is doubtless the civic Thesmophoria. 43 The Proerosia can be no earlier than the second half of Pyanopsion. In the sacred calendar the entry for Apollo on the 7 th IS Im­ mediately followed by another, or by a continuation of the same entry: a line between has been erased. After the erasure, the entry runs as follows (Jines 15-19). "For the Hierophant and thel priestesses 'tat~ E~ 'EA[€]uO't[-1 in the pannychisl to pro­ vide libations,! cakes, [something more]." The next line is again erased, with the erasure extending into the margin, so that a figure for expenses was also removed; there is no such figure beside lines 15-19. On the current view, this is a delegation from Eleusis to the Pyanopsia at Athens. 44 The initial erasure is of some detail per­ taining to the Pyanopsia; the priestesses are those E~ 'EA€U­ at[ VO~; the Eleusinian officiants came to Athens with the Eleu­ sinian offerings of lines 8_13. 45 On the view that prevailed be- 4J l:Ar. Thesm. 80,585,834; Hsch. S.Vll. avol)o~, 'tpl-cT] 8mJlocpoplwV; Photo S.7.I. 8£OjlOq>0PlWV TJJltpat I)'. Because the ceremony of the opening day, 9 Pyanopsion, called ·Stenia," was more public, it is often individually named (Ar. Thesm. 834; Eubulus, FCC V fro 146; IC IF 674.6; B. D. Meritt and J. S. Traill, The Athenian Councillors [Princeton 1974] nos. 70.6ff [as restored], 78.6ff, 240.9f). The lexica therefore treat it as a separate festival of Demeter (S.Vll. o't'fIvta, cr'tT]vtiOOat). As a further consequence, Aristophanes' scholia and related entries in the lexica, all cited above, restrict the general name "Thesmo­ phoria" to the days following the 9th, either 1 0-13 or 11-13 Pyanopsion, with an ensuing controversy about the proper count of days (Aristophanes ob­ viously counted five, for he says at line 80 that the third day is the middle one; the ancient controversy precludes any modern emendation). All this is reproduced in our handbooks, which further say that the seaside celebration of 10 Pyanopsion at Halimus was once a separate deme festival, adopted by the city as a conciliatory gesture. But the deme Halimus, represented by three Councillors, is no more than a small adjunct to the harbor of Phalerum; it was never an independent community with its own festival calendar. In Philicus' Hymn to Demeter, as it seems to be, "Attic Iambe" comes from Halimus to cheer Demeter (SH 680 lines 54-62 with n. ad 54). This is to associate Athens' Thesmophoria with Eleusis' Mysteries in a common aetiology. Other evidence shows that a seaside ritual was part of the Thesmophoria everywhere. In the early days when Phalerum, not Peiraeus, was a busy port, Cape Colias in Halimus was the nearest suitable shore that was not much frequented. We shall come to the civic Thesmophoria (XII infra) and to the seaside ritual (XVII infra). 44 Dow and Healey 28-31; Roux 564-72; Richardson (supra n.32) 278; Soko­ lowski on LSCC 7; Clinton (supra n.33) 22, 47. 45 ·We should expect to find Eleusinian personnel present along with their offerings," sciL those of lines 8-13, say Dow and Healey (29). But the offerings of lines 8-13 are clearly for Apollo's daytime festival, and distinct from the materials of the pannychis. Roux (564-72) compares the daytime offerings Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 335 fore Dow and Healey, it is the festival Stenia, when the women are said to have bantered each other "at night. "46 The initial era­ sure is of a date, presumably the "9 th ." The priestesses were thought to be those "in Eleusis," but Dow and Healey say that E~ is certain. It is hard to believe that the Hierophant and the collective priestesses of Eleusis came as guests to Apollo's festival at Athens. Such a visitation-the priesthood of one cult attending a festival in another cult-would be unparalleledY Nor is a pan­ nychis, or any activity of women, otherwise attested for Apollo's festival. We may also think it strange for the priestes­ ses alone to be designated as coming "from Eleusis." The restor­ ation E~ 'EA[£]UO'l[viou is equally possible; the priestesses are then "from the Eleusinium," i.e., the main walled sanctuary.48 As we saw above, the festival Proerosia is conducted outside the sanctuary as well as inside; so indeed are the Mysteries. "The priestesses from the Eleusinium" might take part in a pan­ nychis outside the sanctuary. This festivity is surely at Eleusis, as was formerly assumed. But it will not be the Stenia, a name that is heard of only at Athens. It must be related to the proclamation of the Proerosia shortly before. That proclamation was made at Athens and was with Delphic ritual as he conceives it; even if the comparison is sound, it does not bear on the pannychis. 46 Ziehen on LGS 2.6, and ·navv'\lxi~ (1)," RE 18.3 (1949) 631; Hiller von Gaertringen, n.7 ad SIG) 1038; Deubner 53. 47 The Torch-bearer has an active role in the civic Lenaea (l:Ar. Ran. 479). At this winter season vine and grain share a common need of rain, which seems to be reflected in the cults of Dionysus and Demeter; cf Deubner 125f. The Eleusinian priestess of Demeter receives a fee at the Lesser Mysteries of Agrae (IG P 6c10f). Both cases are altogether different from the supposed visitation. 48 So the text of LSeG 7, though Sokolowski does not offer much explan­ ation (in any case he thinks that the priestesses are bound for the Pyanopsia). The -Eleusinium" of Eleusis is referred to quite off-handedly in the first ap­ aTchai decree and in Eleusinian accounts: IG P 78.29; IF 1666A1, 1672.6, 1673.81. It can only be the main sanctuary, more often simply called the hieTon. Any sanctuary may have a name of its own, e.g., ·Pythium." The sanc­ tuary at Phalerum is called both hieron and "Eleusinium" within a few lines: IG P 32.27, 34. L. Deubner, ·Zum Weihehaus der eleusinischen Mysterien," in Kkine SchTiften zur klassischen Altertumskunde (Konigsberg 1982) 741-45, advocates the right meaning though with dubious arguments. Rubensohn (supra n.29: 9-34) opposes him but does not succeed in showing that "Eleu­ sinium" can designate the great hall. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 336 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA further signalized by a tribute to Apollo at the Athenian festival pyanofsia. Both occasions were added after Athens took contro of the original Eleusinian Proerosia. We should glance at the Mysteries, a similar case. They too, as everyone is aware, were enlarged after Athens took control. There it seems to be a matter of reduplicating at Athens the part of the ritual that takes place outside the Eleusinian sanctuary. On 15 and 16 Boedromion worshippers gather at Athens and operate with their individual piglets. 49 As the next two days, the 17th and 18th , are at Athens a complete hiatus, we may infer that the same ritual was now conducted at Eleusis; so it had always been. Thereafter the ritual for all took place within the sanctu­ ary, and the main party of worshippers paraded from Athens to Eleusis. The external rites at Athens and at Eleusis are succes­ sive rather than concurrent because the same Eleusinian priests must preside throughout. So too with the Proerosia. The proclamation at Athens was un­ doubtedly followed by another at Eleusis, the original proclama­ tion of the local festival. The proclamation itself would not require notice in the calendar. But it was followed by some ritual at night, a pannychis, which required notice to the extent that the deme defrayed expenses. When the calendar was in­ scribed, the deme was ready to do so. Yet the erasures suggest that this contribution was afterwards withdrawn. The first era­ sure is surely of the date, the second of priestly emoluments and of the total expenditure. 50 The activity described in the inter- 49 The initiates wash their piglets in the sea on 16 Boedromion, and imme­ diately (we may be sure) put them to the use to which this drastic cleansing is preliminary. As the number of initiates and hence of piglets was in the thou­ sands, supply and distribution must have been the business of the day before, under the equivalent names UY'I>PflO<; ("Round-up," Hsch. s.v.) and h:p£'iu &i>1Xl ("Victims hither," Philostr. V.A. 4.18: the name is conjoined with pror­ rhesis so as to designate the first day). The handbooks assure us that UY'I>PflO<; denotes the" Assembly" of worshippers, a banal name indeed. But Hesychius, our sole authority, expressly distinguishes the festival name from the meaning "assembly," and says that it is rather "to UYEtPOfl£vov. A principal sense of uYtlp£tv is to "herd" animals, especially swine. The first day of the Anthe­ steria was devoted likewise to the supply and distribution of the new wine that was handselled on the following days: Robertson, H S C P 95 (1992) 212-18. 50 As to line 14, Dow and Healey (8, 29) hold that the erasure is too long for a date, and that any date would be too essential to remove-which merely begs the question. The erasure is said to be "of at least 15 112 spaces." [oy06n or EVIl"tEt i.cr"tUfltVO'l>] makes fifteen, [on:Il"tEl i.cr"tafltVO'l>] sixteen, and the left margin is not straight. As this is a local observance of Eleusis, it might perhaps Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 337 vening lines, 15-19, was no longer supported by deme funds, but there was no need to erase the whole entry. V. The megaron After this the stone breaks off. A smaller, non-joining frag­ ment gives another entry in the same left-hand column. It be­ longs lower down, for there is no right-hand column as there was in the other; that column, and so the calendar year, have ended. The text presented by Dow and Healey in 1965 is as follows (lines 22-27): xpo~ 'to I!Eyapov A ei$ 'ta. a,xOI!E'tpa 'tfil iEpdal 'tfil 'tou nAou't(j)vo~ iEpdm E[i~ E]O'tlaOa~ 'tOtv 8EOI!O­ [<; ~WJ..l.o\><; J..l.1'\oe 'to J..l.Eyapov 7tPOOiWOlV aVE'\) 't11<; tEPEW; (/G 112 1177.5ff). The megaron is somehow approached in the Eleusis calendar too. At Peiraeus, however, the time when the act is allowed is the whole series of 53 Roux (562f) is undeterred, suggesting that the whole scope of the calendar is &ceremonies celebrated at Athens and requiring as a result a journey by the priests of Eleusis to the asty . .. Similarly Mikalson (supra n.S 1) 426. 54 Aen. Tact. 4.8-11; also Just. 2.8.1-5; Frontin. Strat. 2.9.9. Aeneas (and he alone) is given credence by P. Foucart, Les mysteres d'Eleusis (Paris 1914) 64; Deubner 53 n.5; Travlos (supra n.22) 93; Clinton (supra n.19) 29 and (supra n.33) 114 n.9. 55 Pluto SoL 8Aff, professing to give the usual version; Polyaenus Strat. 1.20.2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 339 Demeter's festivals: Thesmophoria, "Plerosia" (fem. sing.), Cala­ maea, Scira, any other customary day (lines 7-12). The megaron in the Thesmophorium of Delos figures somehow in a festival of the Delian month corresponding to Maemacterion, three months after the the Delian Thesmophoria of Metageitnion. 56 So however we interpret the megaron of the calendar, it suits the Proerosia just as well as the Thesmophoria. 57 The meaning of the word has been queried: perhaps it is not what one thinks of first, the pit into which piglets were thrown in Demeter's sanctuaries, but a building above ground. 58 Yet the context should dispel any doubts. After the rite that brings us "to the megaron, " emoluments follow "for the priestess" unspe­ cified, sci!. of Demeter, then "for the priestess of Pluto" (lines 23f). We have already seen that in the Orphic version of the rape of Kore, which is markedly aetiological, the cleft where Pluto descended is equated with the megaron as a pit for piglets (supra II). "The priestess of Pluto" is unexpected in so far as a cult of Pluto is not attested for Eleusis, only for Athens, where the Hierophant had charge of it (see Clinton [supra n.19] 20). Yet the ti tulature of Eleusinian cult is not at all straightforward. As others have said, Pluto and his bride seem to be replaced within the main sanctuary by "the god and the goddess," who, being unheard of elsewhere, advertise the uniqueness of 56 IG XI.2 199A48f; IDelos 440A.41. For the readings, see P. BRUNEAU, Re­ cherches sur les cultes de Delos (Paris 1970: hereafter 'Bruneau') 270, 273. 57 According to Festus (pp.126, 154 Lindsay), the mundus of agrarian cult is opened on 24 August, 5 October, and 8 November, a range similar to the autumn festivals at Peiraeus and on Delos. Mundus is the Latin for mega ron, for it is said to belong to Demeter (Festus loc.cit.) or to Pluto and Kore (Macrob. Sat. 1.16.17) and to designate the "cave" where Demeter went below in search of her daughter (Serv. ad Eel. 1.3.105). 58 Dow and Healey (32-35), like some others before them, argue for the pit, but Richardson (supra n.32: 279f) is not persuaded. He notes that only the plural megara is used in descriptions of the rite (such as they are), and that Eust. Od. 1.27 insists on it. Yet this appearance is surely deceptive. Demeter's excavated sanctuary at Priene seems to have a solitary megaron, and there are epigraphic examples both at Peiraeus and on Delos, and the singular mega ron or magaron meaning "pit" (or something like it) occurs elsewhere in inscrip­ tions and antiquarian comment, not only with reference to Demeter. Mythical victims associated with both Demeter and Dionysus are confined in some special underground chamber, always singular. See Robertson, "Melanthus, Codrus, Neleus, Caucon: Ritual Myth as Athenian History," GRBS 29 (1988) 217-22, and "The Magic Properties of Female Age-Groups in Greek Ritual," AneW 26 (1995) 197ff. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 340 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA Eleusis. 59 Perhaps "the priestess of Pluto" keeps her title from a time before this substitution was made. Conversely, there is no reason to think that anything else but the megaron of Demeter's ritual might be so called in this sacri­ ficial calendar. It is a term for the great hall (beside anaktoron) only in literary stylists of the Roman period, probably as a rem­ iniscence of Herodotus' use of the word. 60 Once, however, the word is used with reference to a point of ritual, and it denotes the sacrificial pit. Our source is Aelian, a silly writer to be sure, but here he is irrefutable. It is a silly story about an intruder on the megaron of Eleusis who was so badly frightened that he died (fr. 10 Hercher). As the silliness is solely warranted by the sanctity of the megaron, the term must be true to life. The intruder, a Torch-bearer un­ worthy of his office, We£t (aU'tov CPEPWV E~ 'to ,.tEyapov· EVea OTl1tOU 'ton !lEV 1.£POcpuV't'llt J.l.OVWt 1tap£Ae£lv e£!lt'tov ~v KU'tU 'tOY 'tft~ 't£A£'tft~ VOJ.l.OV K'tA. (" goes and thrusts himself on the m e­ garon, where it was lawful for the Hierophant alone to go ac­ cording to the rule of the ceremony," etc.). Admittedly, the lan­ guage does not show that the megaron is a pit; E~ 'to J.1Eyapov might equally mean "into the megaron" as a building. But then it could not be the great hall, which accommodated thousands of ordinary men and women.61 Aelian means that the Hierophant was the only male admitted to the megaron. The Torch-bearer, he says, was enervated and feminized by the doctrines of Epicurus. With this new woman­ ish nature (eftAU<; Y£VOJ.l.£vo~. yUvavopo~. yUVVt~) he forgets him- 59 See Nilsson (supra n.5) 555-58; Clinton (supra n.19) 51. 11 If, 114f. 60 Pluto Mor. 169E; Hsch. S.V. avVTtP:-apa'tO<;, as DpoT)p6crla (or Dpl1P6crw) is from 1tp6 and apo'tO<;. The stem upa- alternates widely with upo-. So the name is indeed the very same. At Physcus the month 'Apa'tuo<; comes fourth, correspon­ ding to Maemacterion. 129 The festival name *'Apa'tua is formed from *upa'tu<; ("ploughing"), another a-stem noun. On Delos the month 'A Pl1 crimv likewise corresponds to Maemacterion (Samuel 99). The festival name * 'ApllV njll,V 'tOU EU~OUAEros pm'tEl0"8at 'tOUS xoipOUS d-; 'ta xaO"jlam 't'i'j-; ~f}jlT\'tpo-; Kat TIlS KOpT\S. 'ta or O"anEV'ta 'trov Ejl~AT\8EV'tOlV d.-; 'ta jlEyapa Ka'tOl uva O"uYKa'ta~aAAOV­ 'ta Euv avOl 'ti'js EOP'ti'js A6yoS 0 jlU81KO-;, 0 or npOKEl­ jlEVO-; opta are a carrying of "holy unspeakables (appT\'ta) fashioned from dough of grain, representations of snakes and men's parts.» As to the second, the cake-shapes are thrown into the megara like the piglets, and with a precautionary noise-making, as when the piglets are removed. Now the first element should not surprise us. Although appT\LOq>6pta as a festival name occurs nowhere but in the scholium and in Clement, a few lexica and scholia offer a festival apPT\q>6pta and define it as a carrying of appT\'ta. 140 This is simply a bogus explanation of appT\q>6pot and apPT\q>oprlv, terms used in several Athenian cults and doubtless elsewhere too, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus designates the whole class of Greek basket-bearers as ai KaVT\q>opot Kat apPT\q>6pot 'Aqo­ JlfVat (Ant.Rom. 2.22.2).141 ~oappr-ov (cf. apptxoc;) was ob­ viously the generic word for round baskets, as Kavouv for square-cornered ones; once we are told that the appT\'ta were carried in kistai, another word for round containers (I Ar. Lys. 642).142 But when that word had been long forgotten, and when too some basket-bearing ceremonies had come to be myster­ ious (as at Paus. 1.27.3), the latest commentators on Attic litera­ ture improvised as usual and invented a carrying of apPT\'ta. Their intuition will have also told them-though this detail happens not to survive in the lexica and scholia, which are very 140 Etym. Gen., Etym. Magn. S.'ll. apPTIoptU; Suda S.'ll. appTlo opOl of the Panathenaea are by far the best-known, like the lCUVTlq>OPOl of the same festival; the former are honored with statues on the Acropolis. They have a separate and sound tradition in the lexica (Harp., Lex. Rhet. ed. Bekker), in virtue of their appearance in the orators and in comedy. Other aPPTlq>opOt are attested for the following cults: Asclepius: IG IF 974.18f; Demeter and Kore: IG IF 3729; Ge Themis, Eileithyia in Agrae: IG IF 5098-99 (cpcrr]opOt, see Robertson (supra n.141) 248ff, and (supra n.24) 60ff. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 371 brief and derivative-that the unspeakables that girls carried in baskets were cakes shaped like phalli. The glossary thus incorporated the Arrhetophoria of the com­ mentators beside two authentic festivals, Thesmophoria and Scirophoria. It was a fit commemoration of Kore's adventure for a girl to carry a phallus in a basket, for Kore was gathering flowers into a basket at the moment of the rape. In the glossary, the Arrhetophoria like the Scirophoria must have come before the Thesmophoria. The scholium ought to say no more than that it is another name for the same mysteries. But this Byzan­ tine was hypnotized by phallic shapes. Just five pages later, where Lucian mentions the Haloa (Dial. M eret. 7.4), he adds another long note about this festival, in which obscene shapes are the leitmotiv (Palatinus gr. 73, fo1. 210b, pp. 279ff Rabe). At the beginning, the Haloa are a festival "'in which there are set out things resembling male pudenda." In the middle, the women jest "while holding up indecent body forms both male and female." At the end, "there are also laid upon the tables genitals of both sexes fashioned out of cake." The obscene shapes are thus attributed, at the Haloa, to both the women's aischrologia and their feasting at well-furnished tables. As both the aischrologia and the feasting are described in the scholium with other and more distinct details, it seems quite probable that the obscene shapes have been foisted on us by the Byzantine. 143 HJ The initial mention of male pudenda leads him on to discourse of wine and of its priapic effect in the story of Icarius and of votive phalli in the cult of Dionysus. Modern scholars have been very ready to classify Demeter's cakes as a related phenomenon (oddly, one of the first to do so was not a bearded professor but Jane Harrison). Yet we must wonder whether ancient wor­ shippers would have bothered with such effortless analogizing. If the two scholia are set aside, the only testimony to this effect seems to be that of Heracleides of Syracuse, a writer on gastronomy: Ath. 15.647 A (tv 'trot 1tEpt 8EOflrov Ms.: fort. 1tEpt 'EBEOfl(l'trov Kaibel). The female genitalia are repre­ sented in cakes called fl'lJA.Aol, of sesame and honey, which are carried around in Sicily at the Thesmophoria. The name is a form of the words for the nether millstone and its use, to which the female genitalia and the sexual act are often likened. A millstone cake would, however, be appropriate for Demeter even if it were not equated with the female genitalia; so it may be that this notion is secondary. Frisk S.'V. flUA.T\ remarks that the sexual meanings come to predom­ inate in this family of words. The cake-shapes reproduced in terracotta at De­ meter's sanctuary in Corinth are round, oblong, and spherical, and much variegated with knobs, holes, and grooves, but do not extend to any recog­ nizable genitalia: A. C. Brumfield, ·Cakes in the Liknon. Votives from the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth," Hesperia 66 (1997) 157. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 372 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA When he wrote on the Thesmophoria just before, he found the phallic cakes in the glossary, as the unspeakables of the Ar­ rhetophoria. Even while describing the sequel to the Thes­ mophoria, the removal of the decayed piglets, he thought of them, for he thus concludes, apropos of the snakes that are thought to inhabit the megara: "accordingly, they say, a clashing sound is made whenever the women bail-and whenever they put away again those moulded shapes." Yet those moulded shapes are now first mentioned! He goes on to cite the Arrheto­ phoria by name and to explain it as the carrying of cakes shaped like phalli and also (perhaps his own idea) like snakes. After­ wards he sums up: "There are thrown into the secret chambers called megara both those things and the piglets, as we have already said, and they too for the sake of prolific offspring," etc .. Both Arrhetophoria and Thesmophoria, both the phallic cakes and the piglets, are said to embody the same 'natural' principle, the generative principle common to all life, that is cherished by the Byzantine, equally so in the scholium about the Haloa. 144 The awkward language and arrangement further show that it is he who now coordinates the phallic cakes with the piglets as offerings in the megara. XVI. The Magic Treatment of the Seed Grain The passage about removing the pig remains is accordingly vindicated as an authentic rite that forms a sequel to the Thes­ mophoria and has nothing to do with the other festivals cited in the scholium. Women called bailers, after keeping pure for three days, bring up the decayed remains of what was thrown into the megara 144 In illustration of this principle, in the middle of his account of the Ar­ rhetophoria, he suddenly says, .. And they take shoots of pine because of the fertility of the plant." This detail is irrelevant to the Arrhetophoria, and has been added by Lucian's scholiast from other lore about the Thesmophoria. It recurs in Steph. Byz. s.~. M iAT]'tO<;: oi yap (lacuna) tv 'tol<; 8EOIlO OlKOUV'tE<;) Berkelius, ("IooVE<;) ~el ('A9T]vutOl) Holstenius, (M lAl]­ OWl) Meineke. Or perhaps oi yap (U1tollvT]lluno'tui), another reference to Didymus, named just before as the source. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON below,145 and go down into the secret chambers and after bringing them up place them on the altars. They believe that one who takes of them and mixes them together with the seed will have a bountiful harvest. They say too that there are snakes below round the chasms, which eat most of what was thrown. Accordingly, they say, a clashing sound is made whenever the women bail ... so that the snakes, which they consider to be guardians of the secret chambers, will withdraw.146 373 This clashing sound, Kpo'toe;, recalls a ceremony described by Apollodorus: 'tOY tEpocpav'tT}v 'tile; KopT}e; E1ttKaAOU/lEVT}e; E1tt­ KPOUEtV 'to KaAOu/lEVOV ';XEtOV ("the Hierophant, while Kore is called upon, beats the so-called sounder," FGrHist 244FI10b, a scholium on Theocritus). The Hierophant, as we know from Aelian, attended at the mega ron (supra V). It may be thought that the time to call upon Kore is either at the Greater Myster­ ies of autumn, when she goes below the earth, or at the Lesser Mysteries of spring, when she returns. 147 But perhaps she was remembered during her sojourn below. The piglets had fol­ lowed her into the megaron. Some months later, as the pig re­ mains were removed, it might be appropriate to call upon her to witness the rite and its fertilizing effect. Furthermore, a paral­ lel citation of Apollodorus shows that he also assigned a more general purpose to such noise-making as the Hierophant's, similar to the purpose in our passage: 1tpOe; ltacrav acpocrirocrtV Kat KaOapcrlv ( "for every expiation and purification," FI10a, a second scholium). In any case, opening the megaron is a solemn procedure. The bailers observe a rule of purity for three days before; when the moment comes there is a clashing sound.148 On Delos the sanctuary was once purified with a piglet, and there the women 145 Rohde (supra n.137: 356) suggests 'tu (1Li]) crU1t£v'tu: they "bring up the undecayed remains," etc. It is only another way of viewing the same material. The term UV'tA£lV shows that no effort was made to extract a part of it, such as the bones. 146 I omit the !Cut &tuv clause about "those moulded shapes." 147 The usual notion is of a sort of drum-roll announcing a spectacle or a drama at the Greater Mysteries: Foucart (supra n.54) 461£; Kerenyi (supra n.25) 84, 94, 162; Clinton (supra n.33) 47 and (supra n.19) 86. Foucart further holds that Kore is not "called upon" (passive) but "calls for help" (middle); yet even a scholiast would say that more clearly. 148 As to the snakes, Demeter's cult is sometimes illustrated by a door, of necessity a vertical one, with both torches and snakes in front: Sokolowski (supra n.130) 388 (relief from Samothrace, coins of Cyzicus). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 374 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA kept watch during the night. The contents of the megaron are scooped out as completely as possible. This is the connotation of av'tA£tV, properly to "bailout" a ship, figuratively to "drain to the dregs." The pig remains are rlaced "on the altars." Our festival is noted for its sacrifice 0 animals; the "before-ploughing" name often refers to the sacrifice alone, 1tpoTtPoota {8uola}. We now see that the sacrifice, or a significant part of it, was offered at "the altars" of the scholium. Ordinary persons each get something of the remains and mix it with their own seed grain. 149 We saw before that the seed grain is all-important at the festival. At Eleusis, this is the ap­ archai of individual worshippers; at Paeania, the Prerosiad bar­ ley grains. Eleusis' sacred calendar refers successively to a token basket of grain and to the altar; at Paeania the chief animal vic­ tims are offered for the barley grains. How does this help the seed grain? Agrarian ritual commonly employs the magic analogy of human sexuality and reproduc­ tion. Piglets are women's genitalia, a Greek figure of speech that will have much to do with their use here. At the Thesmophoria they are placed in the genitalia of the earth, the megaron. At the Proerosia animal victims are offered to the male powers of nature, sometimes to their female partners as well. The burning of the victims on the altars invigorates these powers; the residue on the altars can invigorate too. The piglets from the megaron are brought into magic contact with the residue of sacrifice; female powers are joined with male, and both are applied to the seed grain. XVII. Women and Men in Demeter's Ritual The ritual of the Thesmophoria, the chief autumn festival, is thus completed at the later and lesser Proerosia. Throwing pig­ lets into the megaron was probably a part of the Thesmophoria everywhere. 149 A crowd of ordinary persons would not be allowed to approach the al­ tars; their portions were delivered to them somehow outside the sanctuary. So it is that on Delos the opening of the megaron had come to be dissociated from the sacrifice (supra XIII). As the Delian Thesmophoria included a sacrifice to Zeus Eubuleus, it may be that the residue was preserved for use at the * Aresia. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 375 The story of swineherd Eubuleus shows that it was also part of the Mysteries. Pluto and Kore descend through a cleft, at a cave. These are the pit and the cave in the northwest precinct of the Eleusinian sanctuary, the precinct that belongs to Pluto and Kore, alias the god and the goddess, and to Eubuleus as well. Eubuleus' pigs are swallowed up with Pluto and Kore, and ever after piglets are thrown into the pit, i.e., at the Mysteries, which commemorate the rape. Clement and the scholium, and so the glossary that stands behind them, tell the story of Eubuleus while citing the festival Thesmophoria as a commemoration. The Thesmophoria and the Mysteries are thus regarded as equivalent, as the same "mysteries.'" Eubuleus aside, the rape of Kore and Demeter's search are re­ counted with various detail as the aition now of the Mysteries of Eleusis, now of the Thesmophoria as celebrated in many cities throughout the Greek world. lso If it is the same aition, it will be in effect the same ritual. 151 A resemblance between them, in broad external features, is unmistakable. Athens' Thesmophoria runs for five days. On the second day the women go down to the seashore at Hali­ mus, more precisely at Cape Colias; on the third day they go in procession to the sanctuary, where the rest of the festival takes place. The Mysteries take longer than five days, but were some­ how extended when Athens took control. On the second day the initiates go down to the seashore at Phalerum or Peiraeus with their piglets; it is arguable that this Athenian rite is copied 150 Richardson (supra n.2S: 149f) lists the places, upwards of a dozen, where the rape was situated. But we should add still other places where Demeter came in her search. For at each cult-site the story was originally told from beginning to end, with an eye on the ritual; at all of them the correspondence between myth and ritual was complete. If a discrete episode is elaborated here or there at the expense of the rest, this is clearly secondary, an effort to gain a place in the connected story as celebrated by the poets. Even Eleusis could be spliced with Argos or Sicily. 151 Yet any literary aetiology, whether of the Mysteries or of the Thesmo­ phoria, will be highly selective. Clinton (~The Author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter," OpAth 16 [1986] 43-49, and supra n.19: 28-37, 60-63) argues that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter displays ignorance or unconcern about basic elements of the Mysteries-about sacred landmarks, the priesthood, even points of ritual. Paradoxical conclusions follow, in 1986 that the author and his audience were remote from Eleusis and Athens, in 1992 that the subject was not the Mysteries but the Thesmophoria as a more ancient festival of Eleusis. Clinton expects too much of the Hymn as a guide to the realities (and Richardson [supra n.2S: 6], whom Clinton opposes, seems to claim too much). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 376 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA from one at Eleusis, on the second day of the original festival (supra IV). Thereafter the worshippers go in procession to the sanctuary at Eleusis, where the rest of the festival takes place. The ritual of the second day shows a further correspondence. With the Thesmophoria, the women's activity on the seashore gives rise quite insistently to stories of horrible bloodshed, after the fashion of sacrificial aetiologies. Those Megarian attackers were slaughtered to a man, whether at Halimus or at Eleusis (supra V); so were the Chians who intruded at Ephesus (Hdt. 6.16.2).152 In the fullest account of the Megarian raid at Halimus, Plutarch reports a literal sacrifice and describes a virtual one (Sol. 8.4ff).153 «All the women," he says, "were performing their traditional sacrifice to Demeter." 154 The Megarians attacked from the sea, and each Megarian tried to seize a woman (it was 152 There are still other stories of women dealing death or hurt at a festival of Demeter, but the seashore is not mentioned. When Aristomenes and his band attempted a surprise attack at Aegila in Laconia, they were overcome by knife-wielding women, and only Aristomenes seems to have been taken alive: Paus. 4.17.1. At Cyrene Battus persisted in prying and was gelded by blood­ smeared knife-wielding women called OcpuK'tptm: Ael. fro 44 Hercher. At the Isthmus the priestess Melissa was dismembered by other women from whom she withheld Demeter's secrets: Servo Aen. 1.430. Battus and Melissa as single victims assailed by the group may pertain to a different stage of the festival. As for Aegila, although the cult was distinguished (IG V.I 1390.31, the priestess joins the procession at Andania; 599.21f, a priest of the Roman period), its location is unknown (the place is named again by l:Theoc. I d. 1.147). It is often thought of as an inland site somewhere near the border of Messenia and Laconia. But the only similar names are those of a deme on the south coast of Attica and of small islands off Euboea and Cythera (for the fluctuating forms, see Meineke on Steph. Byz. S.'U. AiYtAlIX), and the circumstances in the story are very like those in our sea-borne raids. 153 Plutarch found the details in more than one Attic chronicler, for he pro­ fesses to give "the usual version" (,ta )ltv oilv OT1I100011 'trov AEYO)lEvroV). He may also intend to discount the version given by Aeneas Tacticus and others, in which the Megarians are duped by Peisistratus rather than Solon, and at Eleusis rather than Halimus (supra n.54). 154 Plutarch's sacrifice may well be the one that Hesychius describes as an expiation and as performed in secret (s.'U'U. S11)ltu, otroy)lU; cf Suda S.'U. XUA­ lCtOtKOV OtroY)lU, citing citing either ?Semus, FGr H ist 396 F21 or ?Cleidemus 323F30 bis [IIIB 757, add.]). This sacrifice was also known by the expressive names oiroY)lu, u1tooiroY)lu, XUAKtOtlCOV otroY)lu. Now the seaside ritual was as secret as could be on the open shore (n.156 infra). The term otroY)lU ("chasing") probably denotes a violent sacrifice. When Helen contemplates suicide, one means is ~tq>ol('t6vov oiroy)lu Aat)lOppu'tO'U oq>uya~ uu'tOOtOUpov; it will be a O1J)lu to hostile powers (Eur. Hel. 354-59). "Chalcidic chasing" sounds like a phrase from comedy, perhaps meaning a cheap one-a sacrifice of piglets? A story was of course invented of a rout of Chalcidians for which the women had prayed; this too suits the seaside ritual. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 377 in truth a female impersonator), and the seeming woman butch­ ered her individual Megarian with a knife. 155 Athenians readily equate a Megarian with a piglet (Ar. Ach. 738-835). Thus we see that at the Thesmophoria women slaughtered piglets, each her own. 156 No doubt they washed them first, as the initiates did. The initiates too will have slaughtered their piglets straightway; otherwise the purpose of the washing would be defeated. IS? These are prima facie similarities between the two festivals, the Mysteries of Eleusis and the widespread Thesmophoria. There were doubtless other similarities in the secret ritual that took place at both festivals within Demeter's sanctuary. The obvious difference is that the Mysteries admitted men as well as women. It is likely that at some other places too men were admitted to the larger autumn festival. Their admission may be indicated by the "Eleusinian" nomenclature, which-as 155 "The Megarians were enticed by the sight and came up close and leapt out as if vying with each other for women so that not one escaped." Each female impersonator had a concealed knife. At Ephesus it was thought that the intruders "were thieves and were going after the women" (Hdt. 6.16.2); here too the fuller story may have matched the women and the victims. 156 The women's ritual had such a fascination for the girls of Alponus near Thermopylae that a group of twenty-five ran up a tower to get a view: De­ metrius of Callatis, FCrHist 85 F6, reporting a great earthquake in which the tower was thrown down. Callimachus told a story to explain why girls in Athens or Attica are forbidden to see, or even to approach, a rite of the Thesmophoria (Aet. 3, fro 63). In the concluding lines (10, 12) the girls are called reap9£vnca'ic;; ... 'AK'ttaalV ("maiden Actiads"). As the name 'A KtfJ properly denotes the Attic peninsula and the adjective forms can mean reapa- 9uMiaatOC;; (Etym. Cud. S.V. 'AK'tUtll), it is probably the seashore ritual, as per­ formed by matron Actiads. Line 11, replv] TtOalV aeql£vat, TtPlV VUIl(j)LU A£K'tpa 'tEA£aaUl, has proved intractable: Pfeiffer ad lac., with two sets of addenda; A. S. Hollis, "Attica in Hellenistic Poetry," ZPE 93 (1992) 13 n.61. The whole sentence (9-12) founders on the double TtPlV construction. The first 1tPlV, though restored, is dictated by the spacing and the following words. Surely it is a scribal error, anticipating the second 1tptV; 1tOOlV was then ac­ cented to give a suitable meaning. Lege ~ Ttoalv tAB£llrvat, coordinate with £1t' Wllualv otalv i8ra9m in line 9. The girls are forbidden "to see with their eyes ... or [even] to go with their feet." The second prohibition is apt for the ritual on the open shore; it would be pointless for the business in the sanctuary. 157 The initiate washes the piglet but does not bathe himself: Aouovta XOlpi­ OtOV, not AoUOIl£VOV ouv XOlPlOicol, says Plutarch (Phac. 28.6). The initiates go down to the sea ETtl to Ku9upSTlvm, says Aeschines' scholiast (In Ctes. 130); if this language is accurate, it refers not to the sea-bath but to the ensuing sacri­ fice, for the piglet was an expiatory offering on behalf of the initiate, as several sources indicate (e.g. PI. Resp. 2.378A). The piglet needs this drastic cleansing only to be fit for sacrifice. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 378 THE FESTIVAL PROEROSIA in the Attic examples noticed above (IX), but also in Ionia and Arcadia and even in Dorian lands-often owes nothing to the town Eleusis.158 Herodotus gives a clue (2.171.2f). He first pays a remarkable tribute to the Thesmophoria as women's mys­ teries: like the chief deities of the Greek pantheon, they came to Greece from Egypt, being communicated by the daughters of Danaus to the rude Pelasgian womenfolk. But then he says that as a result of the Dorian migration the Thesmophoria had disap­ peared from the Peloponnesus, except among the aboriginal Ar­ cadians. The facts have doubtless been rounded off to fit Herod­ otus' quite elaborate theory of migrations; yet there must be something to this. Herodotus knew of some Dorian worship of Demeter that differed from the Thesmophoria as women's mysteries. Now Sparta's civic cult differed from it, and was surely known to Herodotus. The sanctuary was not a Thesmo­ mophorium but an Eleusinium with a festival Eleusinia; men were admitted to the cult. 159 At our festival too men are sometimes in evidence, some­ times not. There is no sign of them at Peiraeus and on Delos; at Myrrhinus and Thoricus there is no sign of women. 160 To be sure, the other sex may still be somewhere in the background, beyond the purview of our very fragmentary evidence. Yet it is 158 The Dorian evidence is wholly irreconcilable with Eleusis and its Mys­ teries (Ionia and Arcadia can be debated). It includes the month-name" Eleu­ sinios" at Biannus and Olus and on Thera (Samuel s.'V.), the personal name "Eleusias" at Ialysus (LGPN I s.'V.), the place-name "Eleusin" on Thera (Ptol. Geog. 3.15.26), and the important shrine and festival "E1eusinium," "E1eu­ sinia" at Kalyvia Sokhas south of Sparta, on which see R. Parker, "Demeter, Dionysus and the Spartan Pantheon," in Hagg et al. (supra n.23) 101H. 159 The contests of the Eleusinia, athletic and musical, were for men (refer­ ences in Parker [supra n.158] 101 nn.24, 26), and men were certainly included in the great procession from Helos on the south coast (Paus. 3.20.7). Here as with the Dorian month-names the eponymous Eleusinia are surely the premier autumn festival. Eleusis' greatest festival must once have been so called (as again in the Roman period) until it became" the mysteries," and the name Eleusinia was left to the agonistic festival of summer as a local designa­ tion. 160 At Myrrhinus sacrifice is at the hands of the demarch, as it sometimes is in other demes on large public occasions (these are listed by Whitehead 128). At Thoricus Zeus is served at the second cult-site, perhaps at both, by a priest and a male attendant. If the deity and the officiants are male, it is likely that the festival attendance was partly so. At Eleusis the only officiants we hear of are Aethra and the priestesses of the sacred calendar, at Peiraeus the priestess of the Thesmophorium. The corresponding festival on Delos is for women only. The difference then is whether men are admitted or not; if they are, they may take charge. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NOEL ROBERTSON 379 clear that the role of one sex can be emphasized. At the Pro­ erosia of Eleusis, the best known instance, women are greatly favored over men-as they are not at the Mysteries. Both men and women owe their roles in the Proerosia to the magic ritual that summons the male and female powers of nature to make the grain grow. And so it must have been at the earlier festivals of autumn that are far more complex and important, the Thesmophoria and the Mysteries. 161 BROCK UNIVERSITY NO'llember, 1997 161 I thank Michael Jameson for his kindness in reading this article and suggesting improvements.