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

FFESTIVALS

the glorious victory of Salamis, Athenian ephebi proceeded to Salamis where a regatta, a festal procession, sacrifices, and gymnic games took place. We also hear of a running match, in which the ephebi competed with youths from Salamis, and of a procession by torchlight.

At the Thargelia, in honour of Artemis and Apollo, choruses of men and boys appeared, and to all appearances the boys’ choruses were especial favourites.

At the Thargelia held at Colophon, in the event of an expiation of the city being necessary after famine, pestilence, or some such catastrophe, the so-called pharmakos—that is, a man sacrificed as an atonement for others, a scapegoat, for which purpose characteristically the most universally hated inhabitant was sought out—was conducted through the city to take upon himself contamination, and was then drivenout. Outside the city bread, cheese, and figs were put into his hands, and, according to Hipponax (PLG., frag. 4-9; ‘Tzetzes, Chiliades, 5, 726), his genitals were whipped with branches of wild fig and sea-onions, while a special melody was played on the flute.

It is quite astonishing, how many wanton dances meet us in old writers. Thus in Elis there was a dance in honour of Artemis Cordaka, whose name sufficiently indicates its indecent character (cf. Pausanias, Vi, 22, 1).

Other erotic dances are enumerated by Nilsson, who observes: “Thus these indecent dances, sometimes also songs and dumb-show in the service of the maiden-goddess, are attested for a great part of the Greek world—Laconia, Elis, Sicily, Italy. Sexual life is introduced into the cult, coarse and undisguised. The phallic equipment here plays a part at a sacrifice to Artemis, which we otherwise are accustomed to find only in the cult of Dionysus and Demeter.”

The retinue of Dionysus consists of ithyphallic

120