Apophrades

Apophrades , add hemerai , are “disastrous days” of the Attic calendar , on which due to an atmosphere of “impurity” and defilement some private (e.g. going on a journey) and public actions (e.g. giving an oracle ) were neglected .

In classical times, these were the days on which murder cases were tried in court, for which three days were provided towards the end of each month, if they were not already a festival. In addition, the day was considered hemera apophras , on which - as part of the Feast of the Plynteries - the robes of Athena were ritually cleaned.

Reconstructing the meaning of the word apophrades (hemerai) is made more difficult by the fact that later Greek authors often used the expression simply in the sense of the Latin dies ater or nefas . For example, Lukian of Samosata wrote an entire treatise (the pseudologistes or liar friend ) in which he confronted an “ignorant” opponent with the meaning of apophrades without being familiar with the matter himself; Contrary to the above, he explains that no court hearings or religious ceremonies took place on those days. Plutarch , too , always has the Latin dies ater in mind when making frequent mentions . Others even opened up new meanings: for example, Hesychius of Alexandria came to the conclusion that the Athenians believed that the dead came to the apophrades hemerai , when he brought together a rite described by Theopompus with information about the anthesteries , the Athenian festival of the new wine their previous homes back.

The literal sense of the adjective apophras , plural apophrades , was apparently understood from apo , "away", and the verb phrasso , "I fence, lock", a hemera apophras would have been a "day of blocking". Indications that “at the apophrades , d. H. the plynteries and such days ”(as in Pollux in the 2nd century AD) the shrines were“ cordoned off ”, it was explained that it was a matter of precautions against the visit of the spirits of the dead, including for the Anthesteria such a cordon was occupied and they were assigned a rite of the memory of the dead, but which actually had nothing to do with them.

According to Nicole Loraux , this derivation of the word was already incorrect, instead it must be derived from apo and phrazo , "I make it clear, mark". Hemerai apophrades were days that could be "deleted" and in the 4th century BC. In fact, as a kind of negative reminder of the devastating civil war between Athens and Sparta , a day appears to have been deleted from the Athenian calendar on which the dispute between Athena and Poseidon over the mythical founding of the city had been commemorated - which was practically no major problem, since days had to be canceled again and again due to the shifts between the solar and lunar calendars that were used at the same time. This day was also called apophras - this time Loraux takes the information from Plutarch.

Harold Bloom uses the term Apophrades to designate a "method of poetic revision" of a previous text in the same sense as Hesychios. This meaning is also represented in the entry of Pauly's Real Encyclopedia of Classical Classical Classical Studies from 1896, only since the 1970s have the overlays of the original word meaning been removed.

literature

• Jon D. Mikalson: Hemera apophras, in: American Journal of Philology 96.1 (1975), pp. 19-27
• Noel Robertson: Athens Festival of the New Wine, in: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 95 (1993), pp. 197-250
• Nicole Loraux: The Divided City. On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens , New York 2002, in it the chapter: On a Day Banned from the Athenian Calendar, pp. 171–190
• Under the keyword “Apophrades”, the Neue Pauly contains a reference to the article “Tagewählerei”, but the expression no longer occurs there.