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Anthesteria, Feast of Flowers; Ancient
Greece
February 11
Anthesteria, one of the four Athenian festivals in honor of Dionysus,
held annually for three days (11th-13th) in the month of Anthesterion
(February-March). The object of the festival was to celebrate the
maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage, and the beginning
of spring.
On the first day, called Pithoigia (opening of the casks), libations
were offered from the newly opened casks to the god of wine, all the
household, including servants and slaves, joining in the festivities.
The rooms and the drinking vessels in them were adorned with spring
flowers, as were also the children over three years of age.
The second day, named Choës (feast of beakers), was a time of
merrymaking. The people dressed themselves gaily, some in the disguise
of the mythical personages in the suite of Dionysus, and paid a round
of visits to their acquaintances. Drinking clubs met to drink off
matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. Others
poured libations on the tombs of deceased relatives. On the part of the
state this day was the occasion of a peculiarly solemn and secret
ceremony in one of the sanctuaries of Dionysus in the Lenaeum, which
for the rest of the year was closed. The basilissa (or basilinna), wife
of the archon basileus for the time, went through a ceremony of
marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen
Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to
secrecy. The days on which the Pithoigia and Choës were
celebrated were both regarded as
αποφραδες
(nefasti) and
μιαραι
("defiled"), necessitating expiatory libations; on them the souls of
the dead came up from the underworld and walked abroad; people chewed
leaves of whitethorn and besmeared their doors with tar to protect
themselves from evil. But at least in private circles the festive
character of the ceremonies predominated.
The third day was named Chytri (feast of pots, from
χυτρος, a
pot), a festival of the dead. Cooked pulse was offered to Hermes, in
his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead.
Although no performances were allowed at the theatre, a sort of
rehearsal took place, at which the players for the ensuing dramatic
festival were selected.
The name Anthesteria, according to the account of it given above, is
usually connected with
ανθος ("flower," or
the "bloom" of the grape), but A. W. Verrall (Journal of Hellenic
Studies, xx., 1900, p. 115) explains it as a feast of "revocation"
(from
αναθεσσασται,
to "pray back" or "up"), at which the ghosts of the dead were recalled
to the land of the living (cp. the Roman mundus patet). J. E. Harrison
(ibid. 100, 109, and Prolegomena), regarding the Anthesteria as
primarily a festival of all souls, the object of which was the
expulsion of ancestral ghosts by means of placation, explains
πιθοιγια
as the feast of the opening of the graves
(πιθος meaning a large
urn used for burial purposes),
χοες as the day of
libations, and
χυτροι as the
day of the grave-holes (not "pots," which is
χυτραι), in
point of time really anterior to the
πιθοιγια.
E. Rohde and M. P. Nilsson, however, take the
χυτροι to mean
"water vessels," and connect the ceremony with the Hydrophoria, a
libation festival to propitiate the dead who had perished in the flood
of Deucalion.
In ancient Greece, Anthesteria was the name of a festival during which
the participants ritually expelled the Keres, evil female spirits, from
their houses.
Sources:
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It
uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anthesteria"
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