THESMOPHORIA. A very ancient festival, celebrated by women in many parts of the Greek world (as Attica, many places in the Peloponnesos, Boeotia, several islands, the coast of Asia Minor, Cyrene, Italy and Sicily, but not generally among the Dorians) in honour of Demeter Thesmophoros, which does not mean, as the ancients usually supposed, legifera Ceres (Virg., Aen., iv. 57), since the festival can in no way be connected with the bringing or establishing of laws or customs (0ea-i.coi.). It is pos sibly "bringer of treasure or wealth," an obsolete sense of Occrths, of which a few traces remain; or perhaps better (Frazer, Enc. Brit. 9th ed. ; Nilsson, Griech. Fest., p. 324), the name Thesmo phoria is the primary one, from which the epithet of the goddess is derived, and it means "the carrying of things laid down," the radical meaning of referring to the curious fertility charms described below.
As no men were admitted to the rites, and in any case they were largely secret (for the reasons see MYSTERY), we have nothing like a full description (but see H. J. Rose, Primitive Culture in Greece, 1925).
The celebrants were women who seem to have been at least generally married, and who must be free. They observed chastity for some days (nine, according to Ovid, a likely number enough considering its magical connotations), and also abstained from certain foods ; thus, they must not eat pomegranate-seeds. The festival itself lasted three days, although in Attica it was length ened by the addition of other celebrations of a similar character, the Stenia and the Halamusian Thesmophoria, making five days in all, Pyanopsion 10-14. But the original days were Pyanopsion 12-14 only, i.e., about the beginning of October, and shortly after the Pyanopsia (q.v.). The days were called respectively Anodos (or Kathodos), Nesteia, Kalligeneia. Anodos (ascent) is often taken to mean the "going up" of the women to the Thesmophorion, or precinct of Demeter; but this does not explain why the day should also be called Kathodos, or descent. As the name of the second day, which signifies "fasting," describes what the celebrants then did, it is plausible to take the first day as having been called Ascent and Descent, and to connect it with the rite known to have been performed at some time in the festival. Pigs were thrown into an underground chamber, called a megaron; they were probably alive, but the text (Clement of Alexandria, Protrept., p. 14 Pott.) is corrupt and uncertain. At all events they were left there until such parts of them as were not eaten by the guardian snakes of these underground sanctuaries had had time to rot. The remains were then brought up by certain women who had observed chastity for three days and were called av-rMptat or drawers up,—the verb ItyrXely means to pump or draw off water, and it is strange that its cognate noun should be used in this way. These women also carried, or some of the celebrants did, certain well-known symbols of fertility, including pine-cones and "figures made of flour of wheat, in imitation of the shapes of serpents and of men." The
remains of the pigs were laid on an altar, and if taken and mixed with seed were believed to ensure a good crop. Apparently the figures, like the pigs, were thrown into the chasms ; but our authority here (a scholiast on Lucian, first published by Usener in Rheinisches Museum, xxv. p. 548) is both confused and mani festly corrupt ; he seems to be confusing the Thesmophoria with a quite different festival, the Arrhephoria. If, however, pigs, pine cones, figures and all were thrown into the megara and "pumped" out again, it is very intelligible magic. These objects are all, in their nature, connected with fertility—a fertile beast, a seed vessel, a preparation of grain shaped like a creature supposed to be full of earth-magic (the serpent) and like a man, perhaps a phallic figure. They are then put into a holy place, left there to acquire additional mana from the sacred surroundings and the touch of the sacred serpents, real or imaginary, who live there, and finally taken out again by pure agents, whose chastity has, so to speak, insulated them. Finally, they are laid on a holy altar, whence they are taken, heavily charged now with potency, and used to bring the blessing of fertility. To mix all manner of magical things with seeds to make them sprout better is a wide spread savage custom ; the Khonds, for instance, bury the flesh or ashes of a human victim (meriah) in their fields, or did so until the British Government stopped their horrible practices.
The ancients tried to explain all these matters as commemora tions of the abduction of Kore ; but it is rather the legends which have grown out of the ritual, now no longer understood. In modern times it has been found possible to conjecture a reason for them; but it is to be remembered that, owing to the fragmen tary state of our knowledge, the above is offered as a conjecture only, especially as regards the date of the rite.
The Nesteia is easily enough explained; we know that the women fasted, sitting upon the ground. Fasting is a common piece of agricultural magic, and contact with the ground is also common; for a Greek parallel we may refer to the ancient Dodo naean priesthood of the Selloi, who slept on the earth, (Homer, xvi. 235). The third day, Kailigeneia, is "the fair birth." We need not take it as originally referring to anyone so definite as Kore ; it rather indicates the happy issue of all this magic, and doubtless of much more which we do not know, in the fertility of the ground and doubtless of men and beasts as well. It remains only to add that the Thesmophoria, or at least a great part of it, was carried out at night by torc:llight, and that it was accom panied by ceremonial coarse abuse (alaxpoX0-yia) between the women; again a common means of promoting fertility.