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Fire-Festivals in Ancient Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Martin P. Nilsson
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Extract

Fire-festivals are widespread throughout the world. They occur in Europe to the present day. Bonfires are kindled at certain times of the year, especially in Lent and on St. John's Day. Sometimes the fire is kindled on a hill or a mountain-top, sometimes in the plain or in the village; often a figure with varying names is burnt, and in some countries living beasts were once burnt in the flames of the pyre.

The fire-festivals of ancient Greece have not attracted much attention among scholars. The custom is not very common, it varies considerably in details and has been appropriated by different deities in different localities, so that the identity of the rite has been obscured. The best known cases are from Central Greece. In the cult of Artemis Laphria at Patrae, formerly at Calydon, living beasts—birds, boars, stags, wolves, bears, and their young—were thrown into the flames of a great pyre. In the cult of the same goddess at Hyampolis in Phocis human images and other paraphernalia were laid on the pyre. On the top of Mount Cithaeron a pyre was built with great care, a wooden image, called Hera, was brought thither in grand procession from the town of Plataeae, and sometimes other images from other Boeotian towns were added. On the spot each town offered an ox to Zeus and a cow to Hera; these were filled with incense, and together with the images were burnt on the pyre. Private people also made their offerings. It seems that a similar festival at Tithorea in Phocis was transferred to Isis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 1923 , pp. 144 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1923

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References

1 Pausanias, VII. 18, 11–13; Nilsson, , Griech. Feste, pp. 218 ff.Google Scholar

2 Paus. X. 1, 6; Plutarch, , Mul. virt. p. 244 B ff.Google Scholar; Gr. Feste, pp. 222 ff. It is told of the hunter Broteas that he despised Artemis, went mad, and flung himself upon a pyre (Apollodor, , ep. Vat. II. 2Google Scholar). I think that this is an aetiological myth, intended to explain the rite in which a human effigy was burnt upon a pyre in the festival of the hunters' goddess.

3 Paus. IX. 3, 3–7; Gr. Feste, pp. 50 ff.

4 Gr. Feste, pp. 154 f.

5 Livy, XXXVI. 30. The last very circumspect treatment of the apotheosis of Heracles by Dr.Farnell, , Greek Hero Cults, pp. 166 ff.Google Scholar, adheres to the Oriental origin of the myth on the sound reason that we could only explain how such an action came to be imputed to Heracles if there was some ritual which could engender such a myth as an explanation of itself; for instance, if the effigy of Heracles was periodically burnt on a pyre on Mount Oeta. I think that this requirement now is fulfilled.

6 Only a preliminary report of the excavations has hitherto appeared, Ἀρχαιο-λογικὸν Δελτίον, V., 1919, παράρτημα pp. 25 sqq.; cf. B.C.H. XLIV., 1920, p. 393 f.

7 In a paper, Der Flammentod des Herakles auf detn Oite, in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XXI., 1922, pp. 310 sqq.

8 Paus. IV. 31, 9; Gr. Feste, pp. 433 f.

9 Dedication to Κώρησι τοῖς πρὸ καρταιπόδων, Mon. Ant., XVIII, p. 178; another, almost identical, mentioned B.S.A. XV. p. 353. Both from the foot of Mount Ida, not far from Prinias.

10 Paus. II. 25, 4; Gr. Feste, p. 470.

11 Paus. II. 11, 7; Gr. Feste, pp. 410 ff.

12 Annuario d. Scuola Arch. in Atene, I., 1914, pp. 19 ff.

13 The references are collected by Mr.Cook, A. B., Zeus, I. pp. 729 ff.Google Scholar

14 In Porphyrius, , De abstinentia II., 16.Google Scholar

15 In the paper Kronos und die Titanen, in N. Jahrb. f. klass. Altertum, XXXVII., 1916, pp. 549 sqq.