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Susan Guettel Cole
(Chapter 21) analyzes the cults of the ever-mobile and adventitious (though actually
already Mycenaean) Dionysus. His willing worshipers experienced him through a
positive form of ritual madness, which was radically distinguished from the wanton
and destructive madness experienced by those who resisted his cult. Wine was
originally the primary concern of Dionysiac ritual. The consumption of wine, like
Dionysus himself, could lead to a pleasant and harmless madness, when done in orderly and ritual
fashion, but it could induce the more dangerous and destructive
form of madness when done without order. The increasing importance of Dionysus
in the archaic and classical periods reflected the increasing importance of wine and the
circumstances of its communal consumption, in symposiums and elsewhere, to the
developing Greek state. Dionysus was above all a god of transitions. Dionysiac scenes
on Attic vases, particularly those offering distinctive, challenging frontal faces, address
the theme of transition to an altered state, be this by means of wine, frenetic dance,
sleep, or death. In Dionysiac ritual his worshipers took on the roles of characters from
his myths, and the (transitional) donning of costume was integral to and constitutive
of his rites; hence his association with masks and the theater. The so-called Orphic
gold leaves, buried with the dead to guide them through the underworld, are now
recognized to be in fact Dionysiac. Death was a final transition over which the god
presided, and across the Greek world people had themselves initiated into his rites in
preparation for it.
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Homer
presents Themis as a regular denizen of Olympus, described like many other female
characters as fair-cheeked; she offers wine and sympathy to Hera, who tells her to
rule over the gods in their house at the fairly divided feast (Iliad 15.8792), and
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she summons assemblies, both of the gods (Iliad 20.46) and of mortals (Odyssey
2.689).
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At the cremation or burial site the family would make offerings of
food, wine, olive oil, and various household possessions such as weapons for the
men or jewelry for the women burning or burying them with the body, the idea
being, at least in part, that the dead person might have use for these items in the
afterlife.
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The one-day Genesia, however, was a relatively minor festival for the dead com-
pared to the three-day Anthesteria. This holiday, the name of which derives from the
Greek anthos, or flower, was a major festival honoring the god Dionysus, but the
last two days, particularly the third day, were devoted to the dead. Unlike the Genesia,
during which the Athenians reverenced and remembered their dead, part of the
Anthesteria was evidently intended to appease the dead and avert any evil they
might intend toward the living. The Anthesteria took place on the 11th, 12th, and
13th of the month of Anthesterion (our late February/early March), the time in
spring when flowers come into blossom. The festival consisted of three phases: the
Pithoigia, the Choes, and the Chytrai. On the Pithoigia, the day of jar-opening,
new wine was tasted and offered to Dionysus (Parke 1977:1078).
The Choes, or day of wine-jugs, the main day of the Anthesteria, included a
procession and sacrifices in honor of Dionysus, followed by evening parties to which
guests brought their own wine (quite different from the usual Greek symposium, at
which the host provided the drink). On this second day of Anthesteria, however, the
ghosts of the dead were believed to roam the city and stay until they were intention-
ally driven away by certain rituals at the end of the festival. Because the living and the
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dead were supposed to remain separate, as the extramural burials suggested, the
possibility of contact with the spirits made the last two days of the Anthesteria
unlucky, and to avoid pollution by contact with the dead businesses closed,
temples shut down, and people stayed home. For protection against the unseen
spirits, the Athenians smeared their doors with pitch (to which the spirits would
stick if they tried to enter the house) and chewed hawthorn leaves (which were
supposed to have some sort of protective quality, perhaps similar to the alleged
power of garlic against vampires).
On the third day of the Anthesteria, the Chytrai, or day of pots, each family
made its own offerings to the dead, cooking a meal of mixed grains in a pot and
offering it to chthonic Hermes (Hermes of the underworld) for the sake of the dead.
At sunset, the head of the household went through all the rooms shouting, Out the
door *spirits+! Anthesteria is over. In short, the Greek Anthesteria seems to have
served a function similar to Halloween, a night when ghosts are believed to wander
the earth. If the spirits are not appeased by the ritual offering of food (treat), they
may cause harm to the living (trick). In the case of the Anthesteria, it is not entirely
clear how or why the ghosts wandered the earth, or even whose spirits they were,
except perhaps for one. On the last day of the Anthesteria a meal was offered to the
ghost of Erigone, a legendary maiden who hanged herself after the death of her father
Icarius, to whom Dionysus had given the gift of wine (Burkert 1985:241; Johnston
1999a:21924).
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The natural terrain dictated the form of village adaptation and
agrarian enterprise: cattle husbandry and grain cultivation in northern
Greece, while in the southern regions extensive cultivation of grapes and
olives. Dry farming predominated, irrigation beingminimal and used in or-
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chards and gardens. The earliest evidence of olives (c. 3900 b.c.e.) comes
from Crete. Wild grapes were indigenous over much of northern Greece;
however, the history of Greek winemaking is imperfectly understood. By
Mycenaean times winemaking was well developed, and trade in wine, in
addition to olives, was central to the Mycenaean economy.
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