ANTESTÈRIE (Ἀνθεστήρια). — Festivals common to all the Ionian tribes; of those in Attica we are, naturally, better informed. They lasted three days and took place on the 11th, 12th, and 13th of the month of Anthesterion (late February–early March).
The first day was called πιθαγία and celebrated the opening of the terracotta “jars” half-buried in the earth, in which the wine had completed its fermentation. Everyone took part in the joyful festival of drawing the wine, including slaves and boys, with dances and songs; nor was there any lack of a practical aspect, consisting in the sale of the new product. This part of the festival was essentially pri-
vate, and undoubtedly dates back to the time when Athens was a purely agricultural centre.
The second day was called χύες, that is, “jugs,” and was a public festival. The most important cultic act consisted of the sacred marriage of the basilissa, that is, the wife of the archon-king (originally, of course, the actual queen), with Dionysus. Fourteen women, chosen from among the noblest and called γεραρχί, the venerable ones, accompanied the basilissa to the Βουκαλείον, originally the dwelling of the king, and shut her in there for one night together with the god’s ancient wooden image. This was the survival of an ancient magical rite, intended to ensure the fertility of the soil at the imminent rebirth of nature. The procession set out from the ancient temple of Dionysus in the lowland (Διόνυσος ἐν λίμναις), where the γεραρχί and the basilissa had performed various ceremonies at the sanctuary’s “fourteen altars.” It took on—through the action of the crowd accompanying the idol
But also within the private sphere the day of the χύες was of great importance. Children who had reached the age of three received small gifts: many tiny vases depict them playing with the presents they had received. To the ritual practice of the day of the χύες, whereby each person drank from his own jug, with a prohibition against allowing anyone else to taste from it, and to the fact that on that day all the temples were closed, the ancients attached a myth: Orestes, still stained by the guilt of matricide, had arrived in Athens precisely on the day of the χύες, and, in order to prevent the ritual impurity of the unexpected guest from hindering the continuation of the festival, recourse had been had to the institution of these two practices. But the true reason is to be sought in the dual character of the a., which were sacred not only to the forces of nature but also to the spirits of the dead. On the day of the χύες, it was in fact said that the spirits of the dead wandered among the living.
Exclusively funerary was the third, called χύτροι, or “pots,” after the vessels in which seeds of every kind of legume were offered to Hermes of the Underworld (Hermes Chthonios); no one was to touch them, evidently because they were intended for the dead. At the end of the a., the dead, who had by then been satisfied, were asked to depart with the formula: “Go away, Spirits; the a. are over!”
From all the details of the festival it is evident
that it was a festival intended to close the year and inaugurate the new one, under the protection of a nature deity, mistress of life and death. The identification of this deity with Dionysus may be relatively recent, but the rites are extremely ancient and typical of primitive mentality, just as typically primitive is the myth of Dionysus’s death in this month—a myth subsequently forgotten, but one that harmonizes well with the rite and with the conception of the year that dies and is reborn.