TARGHELIA. – A festival celebrated at Athens and in some Ionian cities in honour of Apollo on the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion (= May–June). On the 6th there took place a purification (καθαφμός) and a sacrifice to Demeter Chloe; while on the 7th, the actual day of the T., there was a procession and a contest.
The purificatory ceremony consisted, according to a custom widespread among many peoples, in the expulsion from the city of two men (or, according to others, a man and a woman), called φαρμακοί, whose task it was to free the land from every fault and impurity as envoys. The two wore a wreath of figs, one black, representing men, the other white, symbolising women; they were chosen from among the poorest people (but not from criminals), and for some vague hints in the sources (Helladius apud Photius, Bibliotheca, 279; Istros apud Harpocration, s.V. φαρμακός) and by analogy with other cities (such as, for example, in the Ionian Abdera, where a man was stoned «pro peccatis civium» after being kept in isolation «ut sic omnium peccata solus haberet»), it seems that originally they were not only expelled from the city but also put to death. However, for the classical age it is certain that the rite was no longer bloody (cf. Lysias, In Andoc., 6, 53; Plato, Minos, 5, etc.).
According to Hipponax of Ephesus (cf. 5, 90, Bergk) the two φαρμακοί were struck, as they ran through the crowd, with branches of fig and other fruit, while a «fig-song» was sung (Hesychius). At Ephesus (Hipponax, frg. 7 Bergk) and at Marseilles (Servius, Ad Aeneid., III, 57) the φαρμακοί were fed and treated with munificence at the city’s expense. On the same day of purification, the 6th, in the sanctuary of Ge and Demeter Chloe a ram and perhaps also a ewe were sacrificed to the latter goddess, in addition to a pig to the Moirai. In the procession of the following day, as it passed through the city, the first-fruits of the ripened fruits of the earth were carried, called φαρμακοί (cf. Etym. M. s.v.) and enclosed in a vessel also called φάρμακος (Hesychius).
The agrarian character of the T. is moreover well illustrated by a scholium of Aristophanes (Knights, 730) according to which even on the occasion of the T. (as already in the Pianepsia, in the Panathenaia [v.], etc.) the εἰρεσιών, that is, a branch of laurel (or olive) adorned with woollen fillets, to which the first-fruits of the fruits were hung, was carried in procession. Finally, at the temple of Apollo Pythios, under the direction of the first archon and with the participation of large choruses of men and youths, the contest was celebrated.
The T., then, festivals of notable importance in the Attic calendar, in the two days of celebration contained two profoundly different religious concepts: a cathartic, that is purificatory one the first (expulsion of the φαρμακοί); stimulation of the beneficent forces of nature the second (sacrifice to Demeter Chloe, procession of the first-fruits, εἰρεσιών). But the cathartic concept at a certain point must have blended with that of fertility, as is shown by the fact that the φαρμακοί at the moment of their expulsion, as has been seen, were struck with branches of fig and other fruit.