TARGHELIE. — A festival celebrated at Athens and in certain Ionian cities in honor of Apollo on the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion (= May–June). On the 6th, a purification (καθαρχός) and a sacrifice to Demeter Chloe took place; while on the 7th, the actual day of the T., there were a procession and a contest.
The purificatory ceremony consisted, according to a custom widespread among numerous peoples, in the expulsion from the city of two men (or, according to others, a man and a woman), called φαρακαί, whose task was to free the country from every guilt and impurity in their capacity as emissaries. The two wore a collar of figs, one black, representing men, the other white, symbolizing women; chosen from among the poorest people (but not from among criminals), on the basis of some vague indications in the sources (Helladios apud Photius, Bibliotheca, 279; Istros apud Harpocration, s. V. φαρακαί) and by analogy with other cities (such as, for example, the Ionian city of Abdera, where a man was stoned “pro peccatis civium” after having been kept in isolation “ut sic omnium peccata solus haberet”), they seem originally to have been not only expelled from the city but also put to death. For the classical period, however, it is certain that the rite was no longer bloody (cf. Lysias, In Andoc., 6, 53; Plato, Minas, 5, etc.).
According to Hipponax of Ephesus (cf. 5,90, Bergk), the two φαρακαί were struck, as they ran through the crowd, with branches of fig and other fruit trees, while a “fig song” was sung (Hesychius). At Ephesus (Hipponax, frg. 7 Bergk) and at Massalia (Servius, Ad Aeneid., III, 57), the φαρακαί were fed and treated generously at the city’s expense. On the same purificatory day, the 6th, in the sanctuary of Ge and Demeter Chloe, a ram and perhaps also a sheep were sacrificed to the latter goddess, as well as a pig to the Moirai. In the procession on the following day, the first fruits of the earth that had reached maturity were carried through the city; they were called θάργελα (cf. Etym. M. s. v.) and were enclosed in a vessel also called θάργηλος (Hesychius).
The agrarian character of the T. is also very clearly elucidated by a scholion on Aristophanes (Knights, 730), according to which on the occasion of the T. as well (as already during the Pianepsia, the Panathenaea [v.], etc.) the εἰρεσιώνη was carried in procession, that is, a branch of laurel (or olive) adorned with woolen ribbons, on which the first fruits were hung. Finally, at the temple of Apollo Pythius, under the direction of the chief archon and with the participation of large choruses of men and boys, the contest was celebrated.
The T., then, festivals of considerable importance in the Attic calendar, contained, over the two days of celebration, two profoundly different religious concepts: the first, cathartic, that is, purificatory (the expulsion of the φαρακαί); the second, the stimulation of the beneficent forces of nature (the sacrifice to Demeter Chloe, the procession of the first fruits, and the εἰρεσιώνη). At a certain point, however, the cathartic concept must have become amalgamated with that of fertility, as is shown by the fact that, at the moment of their expulsion, the φαρακαί, as we have seen, were beaten with branches of fig and other fruit trees.