Page 12 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS AND EUPHORIAS: Of Eyes and Funnels, Of Tracks and Traces IV

Galiet & Galiet
Dillon suggests a mythical-ritual interpretation of the ascension, while Burkert insinuates a logical-practical view. For Dillon, this ascension resembles the Anodos at the Procharisteria.11 “The Anodos,” he says, “most likely celebrates the ascent of Persephone from Hades to ensure growth of fruits” (p.113). Burkert, on the other hand, explains the Anodos practically. He deduces that it is called Anodos because the shrine is located on a hill and women, in order to reach it, must ascend carrying all the necessary cultic implements and sacrificial piglets. Both propose that during the night of the Anodos, the piglets are sacrificed and thrown into pits or megara with dough.
The meaning behind the Nesteia’s ritual of fasting, gloominess and sexual abstinence remains equally obscure. While both critics agree on sexual chastity, Dillon again spins a mythico-ritual parallelism while Burkert centers on historicism. Dillon interprets the Nesteia’s fasting and gloominess to be symbolic of Demeter’s fast and dreariness when Persephone vanished. Dillon further construes that women sat on purified plants perhaps to repress sexual desire as shown by literary evidence. First, a Lucian scholiast says that a three- day sexual abstinence for ‘Bailers’ was common. Second, Simonides elucidates that priestesses and women were called “bees”12 symbolizing the ideal virginal woman. Though Burkert partially agrees with Dillon’s argument, suggesting that a bed on the ground, made from withies, may have indeed had an “anaphrodisiac effect,” he also provides two other provocative alternatives. First, he proposes that this action may imitate the primitive state of life prior to civilization. Second, he explains sexual abstinence on the basis that Demeter
11 This is the most ancient sacrifice celebrating the ascent, Anodos, of Kore from Hades to encourage growth of agriculture. Source: Kykourgos’ speech: On the Priesthood.
12 Bees were seen anthropomorphically as brave, chaste, industrious, clean, living harmoniously in the political entity constituted by the hive. The priests and priestesses of the Eleusinian mysteries were called “bees.” Because the hibernation of the bees equated with death, they also became an image of resurrection. Hornblower, Simon & Spawflorth, Antony. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 35
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