One thing that I am always fascinated by are ancient traditions and rituals. Traditions are highly culture-specific and, to anyone outside of the culture that practices them, they seem bizarre, foreign, and inexplicable. Just think how strange our modern holiday traditions here in the United States will undoubtedly seem to someone thousands of years from now! To us, the customs and traditions associated with various ancient Greek festivals seem baffling and bizarre. The ancient Greeks had hundreds of festivals that were celebrated in various regions throughout Greece and during different periods of their history. Here are just a few of the more peculiar ones by modern standards:
The Adonia
The Adonia was an ancient Greek festival in honor of the dying god Adonis that is first recorded to have been celebrated by women on the island of Lesbos in the seventh century BC, although it is probably derived from the much more ancient Near Eastern festival of Dumuzi. The Adonia took place in the middle of summer and was celebrated exclusively by women. It is recorded as having been widely celebrated by women in Athens during the late fifth century BC. It remained a popular festival among women throughout the Greek world during Hellenistic times (c. 323 – c. 31 BC).
During the festival, the women would climb using ladders onto the roofs of their houses and plant fast-growing plants like lettuce or fennel in small baskets or shallow pieces of broken pottery. These were known as “gardens of Adonis.” The women would then leave these gardens in the hot sun. The plants would quickly sprout and shoot up, but they would wither in the heat. This was believed to symbolize the life of Adonis, cut short in the prime youth.
Meanwhile, the women would burn incense to Adonis. Once the plants withered, they would make a spectacular display of mourning for the dying god, beating their breasts and tearing their clothes. They would then lay an effigy of Adonis upon a bier and carry it through the city and out to the sea in a massive funeral procession, continuing to display their grief all the way out to sea. They would then hurl the effigy of Adonis and the withered plants out to sea.
Although Adonis has sometimes been claimed to have been a “dying-and-rising god” there is no evidence that anyone believed that he came back to life until long after the rise of Christianity. Furthermore, the only texts that mention Adonis’s alleged resurrection are texts written by Christian authors, indicating that the idea of him coming back to life was a later Christian misunderstanding of the original cult.
ABOVE: Fragment of an Attic red-figure wedding vase dating to around 430–420 BC, depicting women climbing on top of their houses during the Adonia, carrying the garden of Adonis.
The Arrhephoria
The Arrhephoria was an ancient Greek festival that was celebrated in Athens during the fifth century BC. Like the Adonia, it took place in midsummer. According to the ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 AD) in his book The Guide to Greece, during classical times, two young Athenian girls were selected to play an important role in the festival. They were known as Arrhephoroi and they lived near the temple of Athena Polias (i.e. “Athena of the City”). On the night of the Arrhephoria, the two Arrhephori would be given a mysterious object hidden inside a basket by the priestess of Athena.
They would carry the baskets on their heads down a natural underground passage leading from the temple of Athena Polias to the shrine of Aphrodite of the Gardens, where they would leave the objects in the baskets without looking at them and receive another set of mysterious objects in baskets. They would then carry these baskets on their heads back up the tunnel to the temple of Athena Polias on the Akropolis, where they would give the baskets to the priestess of Athena.
According to Pausanias, no one was permitted to know what was in the baskets and no one had ever looked inside one of them. Even the priestess of Athena herself had no idea what was in either of them. It was a sacred mystery that needed to be upheld.
ABOVE: Roman copy of the statue Aphrodite of the Gardens, originally carved by the fifth-century BC Greek sculptor Alkamenes, which stood in the garden where the Arrheophoroi placed the first set of baskets during their nocturnal journey on the night of the Arrhephoria.
The Daidala
The Daidala was an ancient Greek festival celebrated in the city of Plataiai in Boiotia during Archaic and Classical times in honor of the goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus. Once again, our main source of information about this festival is Pausanias’s Guide to Greece. According to Pausanias, as part of the festival, they would fashion a xoanon, of wooden cult effigy. They would then dress the xoanon as a bride and ritually burn it.
ABOVE: Boiotian plank figure, or xoanon, in the image of a bird, dating to around 550 BC. Xoana similar to this one, but resembling brides, were burned during the Daidala festival in Plataiai.
The Lykaia
The Lykaia was an ancient Greek festival that was celebrated in Arkadia on the slopes of Mount Lykaion in honor of Zeus Lykaios (i.e. “Zeus the Wolf-Like”). The festival was celebrated annually in late spring and was a rite of passage for epheboi, or young men, into adulthood. The ritual took place at night. Unfortunately, we know very little about what actually went on and most of what we know comes from rumors the other Greeks told about the festival.
The foundation myth for the Lykaia was the story of the mythological king Lykaon. The story goes that Lykaon was a friend of the gods and, one day, he was serving dinner to Zeus. Lykaon, however, wanted to test whether or not Zeus was truly all-knowing, so he murdered his own son Nyktimos and served up his flesh to Zeus. Zeus instantly recognized the flesh he was being served and transformed Lykaon into a wolf as punishment. He then brought Nyktimos back to life.
The Athenian philosopher Plato (lived 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) records in his Republic 565d-e that, every nine years, a tribe of Arkadians would gather atop Mount Lykaion and perform a sacrifice of a human being, as well as a number of animals. They would mix the human entrails in with the animal entrails so no one knew which pieces were human and which pieces were animal.
Then, according to Plato, the Arkadians would eat the entrails as part of an enormous feast. Anyone who ate the human entrails would be instantly transformed into a wolf and would remain a wolf for nine years. After nine years, if the wolf did not consume any human flesh during that time, he would be transformed back into a man, but, if he did consume human flesh, then he would remain a wolf forever.
Pausanias records in his Guide to Greece that the Olympic boxing champion Demarchos of Parrhasia was among the men who turned into a wolf after consuming human flesh at the feast of the Lykaia, but who was transformed back into a man nine years later because he had not consumed human flesh since then.
ABOVE: Engraving by the German-Dutch printmaker Hendrik Goltzius showing Zeus transforming Lykaon into a wolf as punishment for having murdered his son Nyktimos and tried to serve him to the gods.
The Thesmophoria
The Thesmophoria was an ancient Greek religious festival celebrated in many parts of Greece throughout antiquity. It took place in autumn and was celebrated exclusively by women. Men were forbidden from attending. Our main sources of information about it are Aristophanes’s comedy Women at the Thesmophoria Festival (first performed in 411 BC, probably at the City Dionysia) and a scholion, or scholarly commentary, on the Dialogues of the Courtesans by the Hellenized Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 AD – after 180 AD).
The Thesmophoria lasted for three days and commemorated the abduction of Persephone by Hades and Persophone’s mother Demeter’s mourning over her daughter’s abduction. One unusual characteristic of the Thesmophoria is that, even though it was a religious festival, a major aspect of its celebration was the telling of dirty jokes. No, really! Dirty jokes and insults were an important ritual aspect of the religious festival!
The Greeks had an explanation for this. According to the Bibliotheke by Pseudo-Apollodoros, a second-century AD Greek mythographic text, when Demeter was searching for her daughter Persephone, she stayed in the home of King Keleos of Eleusis. An old woman named Iambe told the goddess a dirty joke and made her smile. Thus, during the Thesmophoria, all the women told each other dirty jokes in honor of Iambe’s joke that made the mourning goddess smile.
The later Christian writer Clement of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 AD) calls the woman who made Demeter laugh “Baubo” and states that she made her laugh by exposing her genitals to the goddess. Baubo was represented in Greek terracotta figurines as a female figure with her head in her torso, often holding a lyre or some other musical instrument.
ABOVE: Greek terracotta figurine of Baubo, who is said to have made the goddess Demeter laugh when she was searching for her daughter Persephone.
