Thargelia (festival)

The Thargelien ( ancient Greek Θαργήλια Thargelia ) were a pre-harvest festival in ancient Greece.

The custom, a fertility ceremony, was limited to the Ionian - Attic area and later became part of the Apollo cult . Every year in April / May - the 6th to 7th Thargelion - consecrated cereal firstlings were boiled in a pot. Before that, there was a scapegoat rite in which a pharmakós (a person who was chosen to be sacrificed) with fig rods and sea onions was hit seven times on the genitals and symbolically “driven across the border”.

literature

• Dietrich Wachsmuth : Thargelia. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, Col. 650 f.