Page 10 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS AND EUPHORIAS: Of Eyes and Funnels, Of Tracks and Traces IV

Galiet & Galiet
pomegranate, become the one (fruit) and the many (pips). Moreover, etymologically, pomegranate2 embodies grain; imaginatively, we can think of “pome- grain”. Hades seduces Persephone to remain in Hades by encouraging her to eat pomegranate seeds just as Eve seduces Adam with an apple to encourage him into the world of toil and suffering. Persephone’s eating of the pomegranate pip becomes both, her saviour and jailer. It saves Persephone from eternal existence in gloomy Tartarus; yet it imprisons her during a third of the year 3⁄4 when agrarian fertility succumbs 3⁄4 miles away from the paradise of mother and spring. Unlike Adam and Eve, Persephone is the cosmic dweller of both worlds: penumbra and light. Persephone, in a way, becomes the sacrificial sow that releases the fury of spring. In precisely this porous macrocosm, the critical approaches of Dillon,3 Foxhall4 and Burkert5 dwell. They seek to unfold the mysteries 3⁄4 the pip 3⁄4 of the Thesmophoria with few clues from the chasm of earth. Their expert critical approaches on the Thesmophoria revolve not so much around origins per se, but on the polysemic nuances of its daily rites, the killing and sacrifice of pigs, the location and number of female participants and the actual nature of the festival; particularly, whether strictly agrarian.6 Of these topics, the first three are extensively treated by Dillon and Burkert while the fourth one is largely treated by Foxhall and less so by Burkert.
The popular only-women’s Thesmophoria7 festivals, widespread throughout ancient Greece, were mainly celebrated in ancient Athens, Paros, Sicily and Eretria during autumn, the busiest sowing and ploughing season of the year.
2 Gre-no-. Corn, kernel, grain. Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. 33
3 Dillon, M. “Women-only Festivals,” Ch.4 in Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, London 2002: 109-25 plus notes.
4 Foxhall, L. “Women’s ritual and men’s work in ancient Athens”, in R. Hawley and B. Levick (eds.), Women in Antiquity: new assessments, London 1995: 97-110
5 Burkert, W. “Thesmophoria”, Ch. V sec. 2.5 in Greek Religion, Cambridge (USA) 1985: 242-6
6 It also questions, indirectly, whether the cycles of reproduction mirror the fertility cycles.
7 Thesmos might mean “what is laid down.” The Two goddesses are called Thesmophoros.
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