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Classical Bulletin 84.1, 2009

Interpreting the Athenian Thesmophoria*The Thesmophoria was the oldest and most widely attested of the festivals performed in honor of Demeter and her daughter Kore/Persephone, the reverend goddesses of grain and of the underworld. As many as fifty cities or villages in Greece, Africa, Asia Minor, Italy and Sicily show remains of a Thesmophorion sanctuary or epigraphic evidence of Demeters title Thesmophoros. The Panhellenic spread of the festival name and the epithet is seen as evidence for its existence as early as the second millennium BC, before the population movements of the late Bronze Age or the colonial foundations of the eighth century BC.

Although the Thesmophoria was performed all over the Greek world as well as in many Attic demes, some of the most detailed information about the ritual derives from Aristophanes Thesmophoriazousae and its scholia, which explain obscure details of the cult for later students of Greek literature. The plays action is set in the Athenian Thesmophorion.

It is clear from ancient descriptions that the Thesmophoria was a womens festival (Ar. Thesm. 181-88, 329). Only women, and probably only citizen-wives, were allowed to participate, cloistered within the walls of the sanctuary. The rituals were organized and performed by women only; it was sacrilege for men to witness the (Ar. Thesm. 363).

That the Thesmophoria was intended to enhance agrarian and human fertility has been the most common interpretation of the festivals purpose since scholars first began to take an interest in ancient Greek ritual. Such authoritative interpreters as Walter Burkert, Kevin Clinton, Ludwig Deubner, Lewis R. Farnell, Martin P. Nilsson, and Robert Parker have all viewed the Thesmophoria as a fertility rite.

In this paper I shall examine a new challenge to this conventional view, proposed by Nicholas Lowe, who asserts that the only evidence for it, the well-known Lucian-scholion discussed below, proves exactly the contrary, that the Thesmophoria was not a magico-religious fertility rite.

The Athenian Thesmophoria was held in the month of Pyanopsion (October/November), when the sowing of winter wheat, barley and legumes began in Attica (Hes. Op. 384, 615-16; Schol. Ar. Thesm. 80, 834; IG II2 674; Plut. Dem. 30, Mor. 378E, 565B). The Thesmophoria was a pre-sowing ritual which ensured the continuation of the rains and the germination of the seed. In the climate of ancient Attica, plowing and sowing usually began in late October and the operation could easily last for a month.

According to Deubners reconstruction, the Athenian Thesmophoria lasted for three days, the 11th, 12th and 13th of Pyanopsion (Ar. Thesm. 80), although there were also local celebrations attached to the festival, notably the Stenia on the 9th (schol. Ar. Thesm. 834, Phot. s.v. [sic], Hsch. , ) and the Thesmophoria at the deme of Halimus on the 10th (schol. Ar. Thesm. 80, Plut. Sol. 8.4, Polyaenus Strat. 1.20). The women celebrating the festival inside the sanctuary maintained celibacy, and various herbs were apparently employed to ensure this result (Pliny HN 24:59-64). The women camped out in tents inside the sanctuary, fasting and mourning (schol. Ar. Thesm. 658), and also observed some specific taboos related to the myth of Kore: they could not wear flower crowns (schol. Soph. O. C. 681), and they could not eat pomegranate seeds which had fallen on the ground (Clem. Al. Protr. 2.19.3). The feast on the final day, , was apparently in celebration of fair offspring, human, animal and vegetable (Phot. s.v. ; Alc.2.37.1).

The Thesmophoriazousae also engaged in , shameful talk. Some have found the aition for this unusual behavior in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when Iambe with many a quip and jest, finally caused Demeter to smile (Hom. Hymn Dem. 204). The Orphic version tells how Baubo stripped herself under the breasts, to cheer Demeter up and persuade her to drink (Clem. Al. Protr. 2. 21.1= Orph. Frag. 50). Indecent and mocking language was apparently characteristic of Demeter festivals generally, especially when women gathered for secret rites or mysteries (Apollod. 1.30;Theodoret, Gr.Aff.Cur. 3.84;Clem. Al. Protr. 2.19.3;Diod. Sic. 5.4;Hsch. s.v. ; Paus. 7.27.1o; Hdt. 5.83). The use of obscene, abusive, blasphemous language (, , , , ), in a ritual context has often been explained as in some way encouraging fertility.

A most important piece of evidence, a Byzantine scholion on Lucians Dialogues of Courtesans, describes the secret rites:

The Thesmophoria () is a festival of the Greeks including secret rites () which are also called Skirophoria (). It is celebrated in accordance with the more fabulous explanation ( ) because Kore, while gathering flowers, was seized by Plouton, while in the same place a certain swineherd, Eubouleus, was tending his pigs, and they were all swallowed up in the chasm of Kore ( ); herefore in honor of Eubouleus, piglets are today thrown into the chasms () of Demeter and Kore. The rotted remains () of those things which have been thrown into the chambers () below are brought up by women called bailers () who, after having purified themselves for three days, descend into the innermost sanctuaries (), and carrying them up, lay them on the altars. They believe that anyone who takes them and mixes them with the seed will have abundant crops (). They also say that there are serpents down in the chasms, which eat much of what is thrown down; therefore, they make noise when the women bail () and when they deposit these molded cakes () so that the serpents, which they believe to be the guardians of these innermost sanctuaries () will withdraw. The same are also called Arretophoria (), and are celebrated for the same reason, for the generation of crops ( ) and the procreation of men ( ). Here also are carried up unmentionable holy objects ( ) made from bread dough, representations of serpents and of male shapes ( ). They take pine shoots, because the tree is prolific. These things and the piglets are thrown also into the chambers (), as the innermost sanctuaries () are called, as we have already said, and they, because of their fertility, as a symbol () of the generation of crops and men, are thank-offerings () to Demeter, since by providing cereal crops, ( ) she civilized the human race. The above explanation () of the festival is mythical () but the following is natural (). It is called Thesmophoria, just as Demeter is named Thesmophoros, since she established laws () or Thesmoi () according to which men must labor to get their food. (Schol. Luc. Dial. meret. ii.1)

The text, first published by Erwin Rohde in 1870, was attributed by him to the tenth century AD scholar Bishop Arethas of Caesarea, a student of the learned Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Clement of Alexandria, in his description of pagan fertility rites in Protrepticus 2, clearly relied upon the same source. Rohde believed that the source shared by Clement and Arethas was Didymus, a first century BC Alexandrian grammarian, whose voluminous commentaries are thought to lie behind many Aristophanic scholia. Jacoby thought the source was Apollodorus first-century BC commentary on festivals, (FGrHist 3.b.2: 204, n. 77). More recently Theophrastus has been proposed as the source.

The scholion gives a confused account, beginning as a gloss on Thesmophoria but immediately identifying this festival with the Skirophoria and later with the Arretophoria. The description of the ritual skips from one phase to another and does not give a clear chronology of the descents and ascents of the antletriai. Attempts to emend or re-organize the text have not been generally accepted. However, the basic outline of the rites seems to be as follows:

At some point, before the Thesmophoria in Pyanopsion - whether days, weeks or even months - women called antletriai (bailers or pumpers) deposited sacrificed piglets in underground megara (lit. rooms) or adyta (innermost shrines) inside the sanctuary. In the same places they deposited pine shoots and cakes in serpentine and phallic shapes. During the Thesmophoria the same women descended into these underground pits and emptied them of their contents, bailing out the rotted remains of the piglets, cakes and branches. These remains were then ceremoniously deposited on the altars. From here any farmer who wished could take some to mix with his seed grain before sowing. They (the female performers?) believed that the use of this mixture guaranteed a good harvest.

The most influential interpretation of the Thesmophoria rite described in the Lucian scholion was developed by Sir James G. Frazer. Frazer, originally trained as a classicist (although the holder of the first university chair in social anthropology), saw the Thesmophoria as a form of fertility magic intended to promote the fertility of the earth. His Golden Bough presented his universal theory of the Dying and Rising God, which explained the origin of all ancient ritual in the death and resuscitation of a divine being who symbolized the spirit of the vegetation. His article Thesmophoria in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica interpreted the Thesmophoria as a particular form of sympathetic fertility magic intended to assist the revival of the earths vegetation.

Frazers Golden Bough influenced and, one might say, permeated all ritual studies produced in the twentieth century, not only in Classics and in Religionsgeschichte, but also in such literary studies as Jessie L. Westons From Ritual to Romance (1941) or Theodor H. Gasters Thespis. Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East (1960).

When Frazers Dying and Rising God theory came under attack, like all grand syntheses, it fell with a crash which still resonates in anthropology and the history of religions. Despite the demise of his universal theory, Frazers view of the Thesmophoria ritual as a form of agrarian magic intended to reinvigorate the earth and ensure the growth of the newly sown grain, has been fairly universally accepted by scholars of Greek religion; so Burkert in 1985 (following Deubner 1932): The manipulation of the decomposed remains of piglets to achieve a good harvest is the clearest example in Greek religion of agrarian magic.

Frazer interpreted the festival name, Thesmophoria, as referring to the carrying of thesmoi in procession, by analogy with other festivals with the same termination, such as Oschophoria or Arrephoria. The (things laid down, fr. ) were the cakes, pine shoots and piglets thrown underground and retrieved months later. Therefore this fertility rite is the origin of Demeters title Thesmophoros as well as the name of her sanctuary, the Thesmophorion. A later theorist argues that the were large, round baskets in which each woman carried her overnight necessities. However there is no evidence of the use of thesmos to mean a basket.

A more ingenious etymology has recently been proposed, deriving thesmos from a hypothesized Indo-European root *dhes- meaning holy. Therefore Demeters festival is called Thesmophoria because holy things (the rotted remains) are carried in procession. Construing thesmoi as holy things presents the same difficulty as interpreting thesmoi as baskets: examples of thesmoi used of concrete objects are few and are more easily understood as referring to divine wishes or ordinances.

All of these approaches assume that the name of the festival and the title of the goddess derive from the carrying of ritual objects, and therefore that the goddess is imagined to imitate or join with the women who carry these things. Yet why would the deity be called bearer of thesmoi, as if she were a participant in her own ritual rather than the recipient of the ritual thank-offering? How can we derive Demeters epithet Thesmophoros and the festival name Thesmophoria from the rotted pigflesh and pine shoots thrown down into Demeters underground Megara? It is the goddesses Demeter and Kore who are called Thesmophoroi (frequently in the dual); the ritual performers, the bailing-women are antletriai. Neither are the Athenian women celebrants of the festival ever called Thesmophoroi; they are Thesmophoriazousae.

Festival names with the termination phoria such as Oschophoria or Arrephoria are often cited as appropriate parallels to the Thesmophoria, yet there is no Apollo Oschophoros or Athena Arrephoros. The oschophoroi are young men carrying grape-bunches in the first, and the arrephoroi are young girls carrying secret things in the second.

A more abstract meaning for the epithet Thesmophoros might fit better. The element thesmos may properly be derived from , to lay down, ordain, or establish, as a law or decree. In attempting to determine the meaning of thesmos we should appeal to usage rather than to novelty. Nowhere in ancient literature do we find a definition or usage of this word as meaning deposited thing holy thing or basket. However we do find numerous ancient lexicographical and literary references which present thesmos as meaning law in a specialized sense, as ancient, ancestral, divinely inspired law. Thesmos is a god-given ordinance as opposed to human legislation, which is nomos (Hsch. s.v. . ). The physikos logos of the scholion makes the sense of thesmos quite plain: , [fr. ] , . It is called Thesmophoria, just as Demeter is named Thesmophoros since she established () laws () or thesmous, () according to which men must labor to get their food. (l. 30-32)

Translating Thesmophoros as legifera, law-giver, certainly puts Demeter, most un-political of goddesses, in an unseemly position. However, the laws in question are not political but natural. Demeter Thesmophoros established the laws of agriculture, including those rituals which are essential to agricultural success. The festival name derives from her title as giver of the laws of civilized human life, not from the ritual carrying of objects.

The deposition of the pigflesh, cakes and pine branches in the earth was a form of sympathetic magic, intended to renew the fecundity of the exhausted earth by their symbolic prolificity ( ). The rotted remains were then removed to be used as fertility charms, as a sort of sacred compost. Mixed with the seed before sowing, they would ensure a bountiful harvest. The scholion itself supports the interpretation of the ritual as agrarian magic: They believe that anyone who takes them and mixes them with the seed will have abundant crops (). (l. 7-8) Numerous parallels can be cited from primitive cultures and folk traditions to show the longevity of the idea that objects which symbolize fertility can create or ensure fertility. This is certainly the interpretation accepted by most authorities on ancient Greek cult.

The conventional wisdom has been challenged by Nicholas Lowes recent study of four related texts, including the Lucian scholion on the Thesmophoria. He argues that the four texts derive from one original document, whose author, perhaps a Hellenistic [exegete], who wrote at an intriguing interface between the scholarly and the priestly, would somehow have had access to the womens secrets.

Lowe makes a compelling case for the origins of these four texts in one document of Hellenistic date, and his textual arguments are sound. It is his interpretation of the ritual that requires examination. He argues that the unusual character of the Lucian scholion has not been recognized; in fact, the scholions theoretical perspective is unparalleled in all of ancient literature. In addition, he argues, this scholion constitutes the first and only -explicit evidence for the concept of fertility magic as a major component of the meaning of ancient Greek ritual and a cornerstone text in support of Frazers long-discredited doctrine.

Lowe points out that the scholion came to light at just the right moment to be employed as a proof-text by partisans of Frazers fertility paradigm. Rohde published the scholion in 1870; the first edition of Frazers Golden Bough appeared in 1890.

Lowe argues that the scholions explanation is more subtle and philosophical than Frazers fertility paradigm: that the earth is sown with fertile things in order to transfer their fertility magically to the soil is precisely what the scholion does not say. Instead, the scholiast offers two explanations (logoi). One is mythical (mythikos) and one is physical or scientific (physikos). Lowe would argue that neither one relies on fertility magic.

The first explanation, the mythikos logos, (l. 24-5) explains the ritual deposition of the piglets in underground chambers by reference to the myth of the pigherd Eubouleus. The mythical explanation is aetiological; because Eubouleus pigs fell into the chasm of Kore, which opened up to receive Hades chariot as he whisked her away underground, the event is commemorated by depositing sacrificed piglets in chasms underground. The second, the physikos logos, is natural or scientific: The piglets, cakes and pine cones are symbols (sunthemata) offered to Demeter in thanksgiving for her civilizing gifts. That the earth is sown with fertile things in order to transfer their fertility magically to the soil is precisely what the scholion does not say. The reason, rather, for the offerings is not an act of sympathetic magic but a thank-offering (charisterion) to Demeter. Lowe asserts that the statement they believe () that anyone who takes them and mixes them with the seed will have abundant crops(l.12-13) forms no part of either logos, even though l. 28 states: the above () explanation () [the above includes the statement of what they believe] of the festival is mythical () but the following is natural (physikos).

At three points, I will argue, Lowe has overstated his case: 1. The Lucian scholion is not the only evidence for fertility magic in ancient Greek ritual. 2. The statement of the ritual performers themselves on the meaning of the ritual cannot be simply dismissed. 3. Even if little scholarly support remains for Frazers metatheory of the Dying and Rising God this does not mean that the fertility paradigm has been disowned by all serious scholars.

First, Lowe argues that the Lucian scholion is the only ancient evidence ever found for the concept of fertility magic as a major component of the meaning of ancient Greek ritual: [the scholion] was a cornerstone text for the general application to antiquity of what has been called the Mannhardt-Frazer hypothesis or fertility paradigm: the doctrine that religious ritual historically originates in, and preserves the more or less atrophied traces of, the attempt to compel the productivity of the natural world by supernatural means. Thus if Lowe can show that this scholion does not say what it has always been thought to say, he will have retired Frazers fertility paradigm for good, at least in its application to ancient Greek ritual.

However, with his emphasis on compelling productivity and on the origin of all ritual, Lowe restates Frazers case for the fertility paradigm in a way that might be likened to setting up an easily demolished straw man. The idea that all religious ritual originates in fertility magic - hardly a proper statement of Frazers theory - is untenable. However, it is apparent that a great deal of ancient ritual concerned itself precisely with encouraging the productivity of the natural world. Numerous examples can be cited to show that ritual words and actions in the cult of Demeter were believed to encourage (not compel), fertility.

The Proerosia (before plowing) rites performed in honor of Demeter are described as sacrifices taking place before plowing for the future crops, that they may be brought to maturity (Suda s.v. , Hsych. s.v. ). Clearly these rituals aim to encourage the earths fertility.

The three sacred plowings performed in Athens, Sciron and Eleusis were believed to assist the germination of the seed sown by each individual farmer, who would also perform his own fertility rites as he plowed and sowed his grain (Plut. Praec. Conj. 42. 144). Similar customs prevailed in recent centuries in rural Greece.

In the Eleusinian Mysteries the priest was said to call out to the sky, Rain! and to the earth, Conceive!, both verbs in the imperative (Hipp. Haer. V.7.34, Procl. In Tim 293C). This ritual may have taken place on the last day of the Mysteries, the Plemochoai, when libations were poured to east and west (Athen. 496a). The meaning of the imperative is obvious: the sky is urged, not compelled, to impregnate the earth with rain. Is this a magical formula which compels the productivity of the natural world? No, this is rather an invocation of the coupling of Zeus and Demeter; the two deities are associated in agrarian ritual as early as Hesiod: pray to Zeus of the earth () and to pure Demeter to make Demeters holy grain sound and heavy, when first you begin plowing.. (Hes. Op. 465-7). Gods cannot be compelled, but fertility rituals must be effective; they cannot be merely expressive or symbolic. Any more philosophical interpretation of these magical and precatory utterances is unnecessary.

Another example comes from Demeters Haloa festival (Phot., Suda ). On this cold winter night the women slept in the sanctuary at Eleusis, built bonfires, feasted and told obscene stories, all activities intended to magically stimulate the growth of the grain, arrested by winters cold and dryness.

Finally, a sacred calendar from the island of Mykonos prescribes a sacrifice of a pregnant sow in early spring to Demeter (for the crop) as well as to Kore and Zeus Bouleus, the other personae appearing in the Lucian scholions version of the myth. This ritual, performed at an insecure time of year, when the fields have not yet become thickly green with the new grain, is clearly an attempt to encourage fertility.

A second difficulty is that Lowe does not give sufficient credence to the scholions statement, They believe that anyone who takes them and mixes them with the seed will have abundant crops.(l. 7-8) They are presumably the antletriai, the women who perform the ritual, since they are the subject of the sentence immediately preceding. Lowe asserts the beliefs attributed by these verbs are not the actual logos of the ritual, but incidental, unverifiable superstitions from which the author seems to want to distance himself: the imaginary snakes guarding the chambers, the belief in the fertilizing power of the remains. Instead, the verbs they think and they say, he argues, distinguish the authoritative voice of the interpreting observer from a more provisional viewpoint conveniently attributed to the actors

If Lowes view of the meaning intended by the author of the scholion is correct, then the reader must accept that the author, the interpreting observer, the educated Hellenistic exegete, is more authoritative as to the real meaning of the ritual than are the actors, antletriai and others who are only capable of expressing provisional but unverifiable superstitions. Whose interpretation is to be privileged? Should we give pride of place to the informant, as a field anthropologist might do, and accept the explanation of the unsophisticated performers who, however naively, believed that mixing the sacred compost with the seed produced a bountiful harvest? Or should we regard the Stoic allegorist and redactor of the scholion as the best explicator of the rituals meaning? For that learned interpreter, the magical function served by the remains is neither part of the physikos nor the mythikos logos.

We need to be reminded that rituals are overdetermined; that is their strength. The meaning of a ritual can be disputed among the participant, the remote observer and even the heresiologist. Is the meaning of a ritual to be found in the learned rationalization of priest or philosopher, or in the just-so stories told by its performers?

It is rare that historians of ancient religion find a clear statement of the ritual performers understanding of why they are doing what they do. We seem to have such a statement here, even though the commentator may prefer his own philosophical perspective to the simple conceptions of the ritual actors. This scholion is an excellent example of an ancient learned tradition: the use of allegory and rationalization to explain away the simple crudity of myths and rituals cherished by their performers because of their perceived antiquity and apparent effectiveness. In this same tradition, Philo made Moses into a philosopher and the miracles at the Red Sea into teaching points for his philosophy, and Plato similarly transformed or created myths as a basis for his cosmology (Philo, Life of Moses; Pl. Timaeus).

Contrariwise, Clement of Alexandria exposed the real meaning of Demeters mysteries as nothing more than sex-worship: for I must expose their sacred things[among them] a womans comb, which is a euphemism and mystic expression for the . (Clem. Al. Protr. 2.21.2)

To convince the Greeks of the intellectual poverty of their religious traditions, Clement must expose the crudity of these fertility rituals, and strip away the veil of refined philosophical interpretation - exactly the kind of interpretation employed by the Lucian scholion, which transforms the Thesmophoria ritual from a thoroughly irrational magical mumbo-jumbo, a revolting mixture of rotted piglets, into a symbolic thank-offering and a re-enactment of Demeters civilizing gift of agriculture to mankind.

Nineteenth century classical scholars also felt a need to explain the crude behavior of the Thesmophoriazousae. Farnell assumed that the modest Athenian citizen wives indulgence in shameful talk (aischrologia), could only have been motivated by a firm sense of duty. The womens ritual performance was believed to promote earths fertility, however. The agricultural activities of men bring no result if not paired with womens fertility rituals.

Would Demeter find a rotted mixture of piglets, pine cones and phallus cakes to be a satisfactory thank-offering in return for her gift of the arts of civilization? Can the rotted remains be seen as a gift-offering? Authorities on Greek sacrifice distinguish between aparchai, vegetal offerings (such as milk, honey and grains offered in kernoi) and blood sacrifice; Demeters favorite victim is the pregnant sow.

Finally, Lowe does not make a very strong case for the view that all elements of Frazers theories have long been discredited among experts. As his proof that the fertility paradigm itself has been disowned by anthropologists, he adduces a letter written to the Times Literary Supplement in 1978 by Edmund Leach, who claimed that, for contemporary social anthropologists, the category fertility god is as void of meaning as its coeval totemism.

Anthropologists might find the expression fertility god a bit dated; that they would deny there is such a thing as fertility ritual is another proposition entirely. Lowe assumes that the collapse of the Frazerian fertility paradigm is such an established fact that little citation is needed to establish it. But this is not so. Frazers central notion, that all ritual is underlain by the enactment of the death and resurrection of the god king and the subsequent benefit of agricultural fertility secured by his sacrifice, has indeed lost general support since the 1960s. This is not to say that ensuring fertility is no longer considered as a primary motive for the performance of agricultural ritual.

The earliest attempts to explain ancient religious ritual sought for its meaning in its origins. Theorists such as W. Robertson Smith and Sigmund Freud actually reconstructed a hypothetical primal scene, the first occasion when a ritual was performed and its form set for eternity.

Others saw ritual in terms of its function or its magical effectiveness. Frazers fertility paradigm can be fitted into this category. The closely related Myth and Ritual school examined the relation between ritual and the myth which was assumed to accompany and explain it. The myth was the eternal aspect of the idea expressed by ritual action.

The sociological school of Emile Durkheim viewed ritual independently of any mythical correlate and found the value of ritual in its ability to enact social cohesion. Many anthropologists, from Malinowski to Victor Turner, applied this theoretical template to the religious lives of primitive peoples, just as Frazer had used examples from modern folk culture as well as ancient ritual texts.

Classicists have eagerly adopted the models of social anthropology, especially in the explanation of ritual. Today ancient Greek ritual is typically described as a means for creating social identity. A recent study concludes, The focus of ritual studies these days is on ritual as a contested space for social action and identity politics. And social identity is now typically thought of as being created and maintained through performance.

Edmund Leach, who dismissed the idea of a fertility god, was a Durkheimian heavily influenced by the structural anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss, whose search for the deep structure rested ultimately on Saussurean semiotic theory. Such linguistic approaches influenced the late 20th-century French school of Vernant and Detienne, whose method applied literary critical techniques to ancient Greek religious behavior.

The newest school of cultural criticism, Deconstructionism, would argue that the ritual behavior of the Thesmophoriazousae can only be evaluated in literary terms, as a text or a discourse, rather than as a historical datum. From the perspective of text-oriented historians as well as field anthropologists, the semiotic approach seems to have reached a dead end.

An alternate interpretative stream was developed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas, who saw ritual as more than a semiotic exercise; her theories, which owed much to the sociological approach of Durkheim, still had explanatory value for the pragmatic goals of ancient fertility rites such as the Thesmophoria. In analyzing the history of ritual theory, she noted a crucial dichotomy in assessments of the meaning of ritual: the nineteenth century attempt to distinguish between religion and magic quickly enshrined the notion that pagan religions were magical, whereas Judaism and Christianity were ethical. This dichotomy paralleled Protestant views of the contrast between the ethical focus of the Reformed churches and the magical style of Catholicism, so given to mumbo-jumbo and meaningless ritual. Therefore, Douglas concluded, comparative religion has inherited an ancient sectarian quarrel about the value of formal ritual.

Douglas regarded both religion and magic as symbolic action whose meaning and form is determined by social organization. In discussing the religious ideas of the so-called Bog Irish immigrants to London, Douglas noted their propensity to carefully observe so-called magical forms of symbolic action (Catholic ritual) which reflected their small, closed immigrant community; the majority society around them, as an open organization without strictly defined boundaries, preferred so-called religious forms of symbolic action (Protestantism) and espoused universal values. She concluded that both types of religious ethos and their corresponding forms of ritual behavior, the magical-sacramental on the one hand, and the ethical- commemorative on the other, are determined by social organization. It is certainly not the case that one involves magic, while the other involves real religion.

Magic is not an objective behavior category, but a highly value-laden term. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars defined magic as primitive ritual, automatically effective, in contrast to the ethical and pure worship characteristic of religion. Magic has carried this negative connotation at least since the ancient Greeks used the word magikos to refer to the sinister but effective activities of the Persian magoi. Magic often implies the manipulation of objects, people or even deities in a cold-blooded, objectified manner to achieve ones ends, rather than supplication or right relationship to the source of divine power. Magic almost always carries negative connotations. Put plainly, it is only other peoples ritual activities which are magical never our own.

Returning to the Lucian scholion, it is clear how this long-standing scholarly argument has played out in Lowes analysis of the meaning of the Thesmophoria ritual. The nave bystander, who believes that the use of the seed will improve his yield, employs a magical-sacramental understanding of the nature and function of ritual, not significantly distinct from the Roman Catholic concept of the efficacy of sacrament, ex opere operato. The learned scholiast, on the other hand, advances a different concept of ritual and its ethical- commemorative meaning, which Lowe finds to be far more complex, more interesting, and (perhaps above all) more recognizably Greek. Like the Protestant interpretation of Christianitys central ritual, the eucharist, as a symbolic commemoration rather than the effective real presence, the Thesmophorias meaning is fully contained in its symbolic value. Therefore according to the scholion the ritual actions of the antletriai recall a mythical event (the mythikos logos) and are performed in order to offer thanks to Demeter for the gift of civilization (the physikos logos). They do not accomplish any task (such as aiding fertility).

Examination of this magical-ethical dichotomy gives us an understanding as to why the ancient scholiast - as well as the modern classicist - might prefer the refined ethical-commemorative logos of the learned priestly commentator to the simplistic magical-sacramental understanding naively proffered by the ritual performers. As Mary Douglas notes: Those who despise ritual, even at its most magical, are cherishing, in the name of reason, a very irrational concept of communication.

Proponents of the Myth and Ritual school have been accused of rejecting philosophical explanations in their search for the original primitive mentality behind ritual, namely, ye Beastly Devices of ye Heathen, as Jane Ellen Harrison has put it. To prefer the philosophical explanation as the real meaning of the Thesmophoria is equally simplistic. The learned explanation hopes to fit bizarre and archaic ritual details into the Procrustean bed of Stoic or Platonic philosophy.

Any claim to interpret a ritual so arcane, uncouth and ancient as the Athenian Thesmophoria must deal with claims that ritual has no meaning at all, that it is not a symbolic activity which refers to something else. Even if A poem should not mean/ But be (MacLeish, Ars Poetica), a ritual always has meaning, even if unarticulated, for its performers. On the simplest level the symbolism of the ritual is of little importance in comparison to its effectiveness. What are we to do with the practitioners claim that ritual accomplishes certain desirable ends (e.g. a bountiful harvest)? What then is its meaning?

The old chestnut cited above, that ritual is overdetermined, bears repeating. Ritual has many possible sources of meaning, for its practitioners, its beneficiaries and its observers. To argue that the interpretation of the educated observer has priority over that of the uneducated believer, or that certain types of religious thought have not or cannot exist, is to disregard the textual evidence. To privilege one interpretation above all would be footless; however, to leave out the simplest, most basic, and most constant interpretation of ritual, that it is performed because it works, would be unwise. Indeed, this sacramental understanding of the meaning and value of ritual perhaps should be privileged because it is always present on some level of everyones understanding of ritual, even that of the Eleusinian Hierophant. However mystical and symbolic an interpretation he might give of the Mystery rites, according to Lowes thought-experiment, he would not deny the benefits bestowed upon the initiate.

To conclude, the scholarly reaction against Frazers fertility paradigm has sought ever more refined and intellectually satisfying theories to explain ritual behavior. We have looked for symbolic meaning, political function, performance of social identity, mediation of opposites all ideas that are undoubtedly good to think. As modern man becomes more alienated from the natural world, he finds it more and more difficult to identify with the beliefs and ritual activities of subsistence farmers or hunting and gathering primitives. The ritual attempt to influence the earths fertility seems simply incredible; could anyone actually have believed these things? Cannot modern thinkers devise a more intellectually respectable explanation for these rites that would show that the ancient Greeks, of all peoples, were operating on a more profound intellectual level? But, if the plain words of the scholion are to be credited, the participants indeed intended the ritual to influence the earths fertility: They believe that anyone who takes them and mixes them with the seed will have abundant crops.

Allaire B. Stallsmith

Towson University

Towson, MD 21252

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* This essay was originally presented at a symposium in honor of Michael H. Jameson in January 2004 and is dedicated to his memory.

On the Thesmophoria generally, see Nilsson 1906: 313-328; Farnell 1906: 75-112; Deubner 1932: 50-60; Parke 1977:82-88; Brumfield 1981: 70-103; Burkert 1985: 242-246, 442-446; Clinton 1992: 28-37; Dillon 2002: 110-120;Parker 2005:270-283. The ancient sources are reproduced in Farnell 1906: 83-97 and Deubner 1932: 50-60.

A list of Thesmophorian sites is found in Nilsson 1906: 313-316; also in Farnell 1906: 328-332 ; for Attica, see Clinton 1996: 111-125. For archaeological evidence, see Kron 1992.

Burkert 1985: 242; Trmpy 2004: 13-16.

Ar. Thesm. 278: . On the location of the Thesmophorion sanctuary in Athens, see Thompson 1936; Broneer 1942. Clinton 1996:124-5 and Miles 1998:22-23 agree that the City Eleusinion was not the site for the national Thesmophoria. Aristophanes Thesmophorion on the Pnyx might be a comic invention: Clinton 1996:117-120. The Thesmophoria in the Attic demes is discussed by Mikalson 1977: 426 and Parker 1987:142, 2005: 75, but see Robertson 1996: 358-379, who denies that the Thesmophoria was performed in the Attic demes.

On the celebrants, see Deubner 1932: 54; Brumfield 1999: 1-9; Parker 2005: 270-72. Cole 1994: 213 notes the virtual seclusion required by sanctuaries of Demeter Thesmophoros.

Parker 1987: 142; Clinton 1996:112-113; Brumfield 1996: 67-74.

E.g. Mommsen 1864.

Deubner 1932: 51; Nilsson 1952:91; Burkert 1985:244; Clinton 1996: 112; Parker 2005:275.

Lowe 1998.

This time of year was emphasized in Attic Demeter cult: Proerosia, aparchai, sacred plowing, and Mysteries were all in early fall. Brumfield 1981: 54-69 , 207-222, 233-235.

Brumfield 1981:19-24; Forbes 1982:230-289; Foxhall 1995:103.

Discussed in Deubner 1932: 52-53.

Nixon 1995:85-88.

Brumfield 1996:67-74; Henderson 1975:13.

Liddell-Scott Lexicon, s.v. denotes the pumping or bailing of liquid, particularly foul liquid such as bilge-water.

The password spoken by the Mystery-initiate is called a by Clem. Al. Protr. 2.21.2.

Rabe 1906:275-276. My trans.

Rohde 1870.

Robertson 1984:4-5 and note 15.

The first is more commonly called Skira; the second, correctly Arrephoria, is misspelled Arretophoria in only two ancient texts: in this scholion, and in Clem. Al. Protr. 2.17.1. See Burkert 1985:442, n. 14.

Rohde 1870; Gjerstad 1929; Deubner 1932.

Detienne 1989:134 supposes that the piglets were tossed alive into the megara, since women were disallowed from the performance of blood sacrifice. This would explain how piglets released into the megara at Potniae in Boeotia managed to travel to Dodona; as Pausanias 9.8.1 says, (others can believe this if they wish).

Such underground megara could have been bothroi, employed for chthonic sacrifices (Porph. de Antr. nymph. 6). The megara have been identified with pits found in Demeter sanctuaries, discussed by Burkert 1985:243, Clinton 1988: 73-76, 1996:56, Robertson 1992:26, 1996:329-330 and n. 29.

Similar cakes were employed at the Haloa festival, described by the same scholiast. Rabe 1906:281.

The definition of magic, and its relation to ritual, poses many methodological problems. For the purposes of this paper, I would like to make a distinction between a magical concept of ritual, in which the ritual, properly performed, is effective in itself, ex opere operato, and a religious concept of ritual, in which the successful outcome of the ritual activity, whether it be performance or prayer, is contingent upon the placation of the divine, by whose will the benefits of ritual are provided. These are rough categories and undoubtedly there are forms of ritual which fit into neither. For an excellent discussion of magic in the Greco-Roman world, see Graf 1997:8-35.

Frazer 1890; his twelve-volume Golden Bough appeared between 1907 and 1915.

Frazer 1911.

Weston 1941; Gaster 1960.

J. Z. Smith 1973, 1990:90-99; Douglas 1978; Bell 1997:3-12.

Burkert 1985:244; Clinton 1996: 112; Parker 2005:275.

Frazer 1911:840; Deubner 1932:44; Burkert 1985:243, n. 25.

Robertson 1998: 566. See 570 note 68 on and .

Robertson 1998:566 note 56 identifies figure no. 4 on the Calendar frieze of Agios Eleutherios as one of these women supporting such a basket on her head. Deubner identifies this figure as a Thesmophoros or antletria because she holds a sacred cista on her head containing the fructifying materials from the megara: Deubner 1932: 250, Pl. 35, no. 4. See Simon 1983: 18, Pl. 3.1.

Trmpy 2004.

Trmpy 2004: 21

Trmpy 2004: 19; Robertson 1998:567-68, 570

Ostwald 1969: 9-19; Stallsmith 2008: 115-131.

Levin 1991: 1-12; Farnell 1906: 75, 79.

Brumfield 1981:72-73; Levin 1991.

Farnell 1906:104; Deubner 1932:51; Burkert 1985:244-5. See note 8 above.

The four texts are: two scholia on Lucians Dial. meret. (Rabe 1906: 275-6 and 279-281), one on the Dial. D. (Rabe 1906: 211), and Clem. Al. Protr. 2.17.1. See Lowe 1998: 165-170.

Lowe 1998:163.

Lowe 1998:153.

Lowe 1998:154

Lowe 1998: 154. This is not the physikos logos of the scholion, however, which says simply that Demeter established thesmoi by which men must labor to get their food.

Lowe 1998: 153

Lowe has been followed by e.g., Price 1999: 99 and Nixon 1995: 92, who see the ritual as emphasizing human, not agrarian fertility.

Bell 1997: 22.

LSCG 7 (IG ii2 1363), 36 (IG ii2 1177); LSS 18 (IG i3 250).

Jameson 1951: 53-56; Brumfield 1981: 60-65; on the Proerosia, sacred plowing and aparchai, see Deubner 1932: 47-8, 68-69, Robertson 1996, Parker 2005: 195-98, 330-331.

Ritual formulas were uttered at plowing, and decayed fruits and nuts from the previous year, which had been censed on holy days, were added to the seed to ensure germination. Karanastase 1952: 217; Loukopoulos 1938: 180; Megas 1958: 20; Sittl 1889 on Hes. Op. 465.

Rabe 1906: 279-281;Parke 1977: 98-9; Brumfield 1981: 122; Robertson 1984: 5-6; Deubner 1932: 65.

LSCG 96, 16. Zeus Bouleus as a possible hypostasis of the Eleusinian Eubouleus: Clinton 1992: 60.

Lowe 1998: 161-2.

Redfield 2003: 257.

Farnell 1906: 104

Foxhall 1995: 106.

Farnell 1906: 92.

On aparchai, Burkert 1979: 52-53; On the pregnant sow, see Bremmer 2005.

Lowe 1998:149 n. 3

W. R. Smith 1889; Freud 1919.

Harrison 1927; Gaster 1960. See Versnel 1990: 23-67

Durkheim 1915; Malinowski 1948; Turner 1967.

Leitao 2003:110.

Leach, 1969; Levi-Strauss 1963a.

Detienne and Vernant 1989. See Polinskaya 2003 for a critique of Vernants reliance on metaphor.

Windschuttle 2000, chapter 5 offers an interesting if polemical discussion of this topic.

Douglas 1966:18-19.

The perception of symbols in general, as well as their interpretation, is socially determined Douglas 1970:9.

Douglas 1970:37-53.

Bell 1997:49 paraphrasing Douglas 1970.

Fowler 2005:283.Graf 1997.

Lowe 1998: 153.

Douglas 1970:50. Burkerts sociobiological definition of ritual action agrees: both myth and ritual are means of communication, Burkert 1979:57.

Harrison 1927: xxv.

Staal 1979:3, 4.

Lowe 1998:162. Comparison of the Hierophants explanation of the meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries with a logos for the Thesmophoria is not appropriate, since womens mysteries (of which the Thesmophoria is a subset) are ineffable and inarticulate; priestesses, not priests, preside, and no written material is used for the rites.

In Claude Levi-Strauss famous dictum, natural species are chosen [as totems] not because they are 'good to eat' but because they are 'good to think. Levi-Strauss 1963b:89.