Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

OTHER FESTIVALS

wine was broached. On the second day, the Feast of Pitchers, the new wine was drunk at a public meal for a wager, and by a secret sacrifice which the wite of the Archon Basileus, the second highest government official, offered to Dionysus, her wedding with the god was symbolized. The third day was called the Feast of Pots, since pots with boiled vegetables were set out as a gift to Hermes Chthonios (‘of the underworld’) and the souls of the dead. Lastly, in the month of Elaphebolion (MarchApril) followed the great or city Dionysia, which lasted several days and by its magnificence attracted many people from the country and from foreign parts. In this also a brilliant procession was an object of admiration, at which choruses sang joyful dithyrambs in honour of Dionysus, the choruses, which then also executed beautiful dances, being furnished by boys. We still possess a document (Corpus Inscriptionum Atticarum, ii, i, 203, No. 420) in which recognition is paid to the boys and to the teacher who trained them in singing and dancing. When the sun went down the procession returned, in connection with which in the streets (Philostratus, Vite Sophistarum, I, i, 235) people drank heavily on improvised couches and one or several phalli played their part in the entertainment. The two or three days, on which tragedies and comedies were performed at great expense before a huge crowd of spectators, formed the culmination of the festival. It may at least be mentioned that, in many parts of Greece, especially on Cithzeron and Parnassus, on the islands, and in Asia Minor every two years a festival of Dionysus took place at night time, shared only by women and girls. The women wearing Bacchic costume, goat-skins, and with dishevelled hair, and carrying in their hands the thyrsus and tambourine, performed on the heights near their abode all kinds of sacrifices and dances, which, thanks to the wine which was otherwise only rarely drunk, very soon degenerated into

Tigh I