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A Sacrifice Without a Deity in the Athenian State Calendar*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
A fairly long, though incomplete, list of sacrifices for the festival of the Eleusinia from the Athenian State Calendar of the end of the fifth century B.C. is preserved in the inscription published in Hesperia 4 (1935), 21, column three, lines 60–86. The arrangement of items can best be illustrated by the beginning of the column in question:
Throughout the State Calendar the scheme of entries is regularly the same:
A few successive lines will illustrate this further:
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964
References
1 Major contributors to a more comprehensive knowledge of the Athenian State Calendar include, in addition to J. H. Oliver, who first published the main fragment, S. Dow, W. S. Ferguson, A. Körte, and F. Sokolowski. A bibliography of articles connected with the Calendar complete for 1935–1960 can be found in Dow, S., “The Athenian Calendar of Sacrifices”, Historia 9 (1960), 292–3Google Scholar. Add F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques, supplément (Ecole française d'Athènes, Travaux et mémoires des anciens membres, etc., fasc. XI [Paris, 1962]Google Scholar), nos. 9, 10; pp. 26–31; bibliography on p. 27.
2 In 12 out of the 13 preserved instances the ἐκ- rubric projects only one space into the margin; the 13th instance is line 77. The reason for this slight departure from the ordinary scheme of arrangement of the Calendar cannot be assigned with certainty at present, but perhaps it was due to the fact that in this instance the ἐκ- rubric stood alone without the month and day rubrics used to designate the festivals in the Calendar. The month and day rubrics project respectively three and two spaces into the margin.
3 Körte, A., “Eleusinisches”, Glotta 25 (1933), 136Google Scholar, note 3.
4 The price and name of the piglet are not actually preserved together elsewhere in the Calendar, but three drakhmai as the regular price for such a victim is also found in several roughly contemporary Calendars of Sacrifice from Attika (cf., for instance, IG II2, 1358, the Marathonian Tetrapolis Calendar, passim). Aristophanes (Pax 374) also gave it as the price of the piglet sacrificed by the initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries.
5 Dow, S., “The Law Codes of Athens”, Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society 71 (1953–1957; pub. 1959), 15 ffGoogle Scholar.
6 Lysias 30. 17 specifies the sources from which Nikomakhos, the redactor of the present Calendar, was to draw up the sacred law of the new Code as the old Solonian κύρβεις and the more recent στῆλαί. In these precise lines he uses the formula ἐκ with the genitive case to denote the sources.
7 The possibility that it can be ascribed to an error of omission on the part of the scribe can be dismissed immediately, due to the arrangement of the pertinent lines themselves.
8 Among the reasons for suggesting Ge as the most likely deity to be supplied, if one is to be supplied at all, are the facts that IG I2, 5, an earlier stele from Eleusis, which resembles in both contents and order the list of sacrifices following line 77 in the State Calendar, begins with a sacrifice to Ge. Likewise, the list of deities invoked at the Thesmophoria in Ar., Thesm. 199ff., which also shows certain similarities with the present list of sacrifices, includes an invocation to Ge-Kourotrophos. The Marathonian Tetrapolis Calendar (IG II2, 1358) has frequent offerings of piglets to Kourotrophos, with whom Ge was so often identified. Finally, the attested custom of offering preliminary sacrifices to Ge-Kourotrophos (Suid. s. κουροτρόϕος) fits in nicely with the position of the present entry, which comes immediately after the source-rubric of line 77.
9 Ferguson, W. S., “The Athenian Law Code and the Old Attic Trittyes,” Studies Capps (Princeton, 1936), 155Google Scholar, n. 52.
10 These customary practices are well known from the lexicographers and the Scholiasts seeking to elucidate the unusual words καθάρσίον and κάθαρμα in Aiskhines and Aristophanes; as, for example, Harp., Phot., Suid., s. καθάρσίον; Poll. 8.104; Phot., Suid., s. περίστίαρχος; ∑ to Aeschin. In Tim. 23; ∑ to Ar. Arch. 43. In essence they simply repeat each other: ἔθος ἧν Αθήνησίν καθαίρείν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ τὰ θέατρα καὶ ὅλως τάςτοῦ δήμου συνόδοῖς πάνυ χοιρίδίοις ἅπερ ὠνόμαξον καθάρσια. The name of the official who performed this rite supplied by the same sources as περιστίαρχος.
11 See L. Ziehen, Leges Graecorum Sacrae, II, n. 58, 166ff., for the text and commentary on the Andaman Mystery inscription. The pertinent line in the text is 68.
12 Ar., Ach. 747, Pax 374–5, Ran. 338, with Scholiasts on each passage, supplies the basic information about sacrificing piglets for each of the initiates at the Mysteries. Plato, Resp. 378a, also alludes to the custom.
13 BCH 6 (1882), 1 ff., contains the text. The pertinent lines are 180–1.
14 BCH 5 (1881), 220 ff., line 4.
15 IG II2, 659, lines 23–4, an inscription from 284/3 B.C. which reads: εδ καθάρσι[ν] τοῦ ἱεροῦ.
16 IG II2, 1672.
17 Ar., Ach. 793: ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ χοῖρος τ’ Αϕροδία θύεται.
18 M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, I, ed. 2, 104.
19 Cf. supra (note 8) for her connection with preliminary sacrifices. Her temple on the Akropolis stood near that of Demeter Khloe (Paus. 1.22.3), and she is included in the list of those sacrificed to at the Eleusinia on the Eleusis stele, IG I2, 5, as well as among those invoked at the Thesmophoria (Ar., Thesm. 199 f.), all of which, in addition to certain common epithets, show the close connection between Demeter and Ge-Kourotrophos.