Lynne Aftuck

The Dionysiac Mysteries and the Thesmophoria

In ancient Greece, religious festivals were an important social outlet for women. They gave women an opportunity to leave their households and enter the public sphere. Two festivals that were of particular importance to Greek women were the Mysteries of Dionysus and the Thesmophoria. Although the participants in both festivals were primarily women, that seems to be where the similarities end. The Mysteries were not conducive to women's proper role in society whereas the Thesmophoria seemed to be in the best interest of everyone in the polis. By looking at the ritualistic activities involved in the two festivals, it is easy to see why this was the prevailing opinion of men who lived in Greece during the days of these festivals.

Religion was the major source of women's participation in public life. It has been said that festivals were probably the only legitimate reason that women had to leave their homes. The festivals gave the women an opportunity to obtain external support from other women with regard to personal problems and concerns. By attending religious festivals, women were also given an alternative to their normal lives in the home.[1] The festivals provided them with respite from their domestic duties such as caring for children and weaving.

The Mysteries of Dionysus were important cult festivals for many women. This festival was in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and mystic ecstasy.(image) The participants in his mysteries were both married and unmarried women, and participation was optional. It is thought that the women were under the male leadership of Dionysus or a figure like him. This festival appears to have been driven by some type of libidinal energy in the women.[2]

Because of the secrecy involved with the mysteries, the events of the ritual were never recorded by ancient writers. Therefore, one can only speculate as to the actual activities associated with this festival. It is thought that the women dressed in fawn skins and carried a thyrsus, which is a rod topped with ivy leaves or a pine cone. These women then wandered the mountains at night and participated in ritualistic activities such as nursing baby wild animals and consuming wine, honey and milk.[3] The women participating in the festival imitated the conduct of the maenads. They did this by performing frenzied, ecstatic dances, sometimes around the image of Dionysus. In these dances, the women tossed their heads back, exposing their throats, rolling their eyes, and shouting like wild animals.[4] It is possible that the women also performed a two part sacrificial ritual which was composed of sparagmos which means rendering apart and omophagia which means consuming raw. During this part of the festival, the women killed goats, fawns, and cattle and devoured their raw flesh.[5] A perversion of this part of the festival appears in Euripides' play, The Bacchae, when Pentheus is torn apart by his mother.

The Thesmophoria contrasts the Mysteries of Dionysus in many ways. The Thesmophoria was a fertility festival in honor of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. (image) This festival is mocked in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae. However, it is interesting to note that Aristophanes never directly mentions the rites and rituals involved in this festival. The only people eligible to participate in this festival were married women, and it was an obligation of all wives of Greek citizens to attend. Men were somewhat involved in the festival because if they were wealthy, they were required to bear the expense of the festival on behalf of their wives.[6] In Athens, the festival lasted for three days, and in other Greek cities it lasted for as many as ten. Athenian women camped for two nights on the Pnyx hill, close to the meeting place of the male assembly.[7] During the days of the festival, all public business was suspended, and law courts were not in session.[8]

In Athens, the festival took place on the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth of the month Pyanopsion which was the time of fall planting.[9] The festival itself mimicked the actions of Demeter, as described by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, when she lost her daughter Kore to the underworld. Women were expected to remain chaste for the days of the festival, and they probably consumed anti aphrodisiac plants which suppressed their sex drive.[10] Each of the three days of the festival had its own name, and ritual activities. Day one was called "anodos" or "rising up." On this day, the women assembled at the sanctuary on the hill, and set up crude shelters to live in for the three days. The women also elected two women to be officials at the festival. The second day was called "nesteia" or "fasting." During this day, the women sat on the ground and fasted, reliving the mourning of Demeter. This time of rest also allowed for the symbolic transfer of energy from the women to seeds for future crops. The women also participated in ritual obscenity and used insulting language on the second day. This was to reenact the actions of Iambe who used obscene language to make the mourning Demeter smile. The final day of the festival was called "kalligeneia" or the "day of fair offspring." The women celebrated the gift of children and prayed for blessings on them and on future families. They also prayed for good crops.[11]

The central act of the Thesmophoria consisted of women called "antleriai" or "bailers" into trenches to bring back the decaying remains of piglets and offerings of dough which had previously been thrown down there. The bailers were required to be pure, and thus they abstained from sex for three days before performing their duty.[12] When the bailers descended into the trenches to retrieve the sacred objects, the other participants in the festival clapped and shouted to scare away any serpents which might be down there.[13] The objects which were retrieved from these pits were sacrificed piglets, replicas of snakes and male genitalia, all symbols of fertility. Once these objects were retrieved from the underground caverns, they were spread with seeds on the Thesmophorion, altars of Demeter and Persephone. This mixture was later spread on the fields to promote fertility of the crops. The exact day of this event has yet to be determined with any certainty.[14]

The retrieval of the decaying remains was the major part of the Thesmophoria, but no one seems to know when the pigs and dough objects were thrown down. Many claim that the objects were deposited in the trenches during Skira, a midsummer fertility festival. Erika Simon thinks this is not possible, because after four months in the summer heat of Greece, the remains would have been completely decayed or eaten by scavengers. She instead hypothesizes that this was done during the lesser festival called the Stenia. The Stenia, which was a nocturnal festival of unknown rituals, took place two days before the Thesmophoria.[15]

Although the men of Greece must have allowed their wives and daughters to participate in the Mysteries of Dionysus, it seems that this festival was not popular among them. In this festival, the men appear to have lost all control over the women of their lives. They go out to the hillsides and forests and act as savages. The first problem with this is that the forest is not within the city limits. The forest is a dangerous place for any woman to be alone, and while they are in the forest, the men have less control over the women. With their frenzied dancing, and hunting of wild animals, the women act more like barbarians than civilized Greek women. During this festival, the women completely leave their domestic sphere and upset the home lives of all members of their family. They participate in mutated forms of their domestic roles as seen in the nursing of wild animals. Instead of helping their babies become stronger, these women nourished wild animals. This could have been quite dangerous for the survival of the family. The rites of these mysteries also contained a reversal of sex roles as seen when the women went hunting. This probably scared the men because it showed that the women had as much ability as the men did to perform typically male jobs. Men must have also feared that there was sexual immorality at the festival, an idea which must have flourished because the rites took place at night and often in the presence of a man. The Mysteries of Dionysus did not have any advantages for the men, but they did allow for a great deal of freedom for the women, at least for one night. It was this freedom that made the men fear and dislike this religious ritual.

Unlike the Mysteries of Dionysus, the Thesmophoria seems to have been revered by the men of Athens. The reason for this is that it was in the best interest of the polis. It did everyone in the city good to have the women out praying for fertility of the land and of themselves. Although the women left their domestic sphere for three days, that seemed to be all right because in return for the three days, the men would be ensured of good crops and lots of children to carry on the bloodlines. Chastity was strictly enforced at the Thesmophoria, and thus the men had no worries about the purity of their offspring or sexual impropriety of their wives. Even though the women left their homes and domestic duties, they were still confined within the city walls. This meant that the men would still have some control over the women because they knew where they would be at all times. Also, there were absolutely no men permitted at this festival, so the men had no concerns about their wives being corrupted by another man. With regard to the Thesmophoria, men received grain and children in return for allowing their wives to leave for three days. This is probably why they gave so much of their support to a function which was for women only.

The Dionysiac Mysteries and the Thesmophoria both gave women in Greece an opportunity to escape, even just for a short time, from the domestic women's sphere. It was a time for women to legitimately leave the home to participate in religious rituals, as well as interact socially with lots of other women. The men of Greece seem to have looked at these festivals in two different lights; they seem to have disliked the Mysteries of Dionysus but wholeheartedly supported the Thesmophoria. They had everything to lose and nothing to gain with the Mysteries, whereas the Thesmophoria provided them with all the advantages that they could want.