TARGHELIE. - A festival celebrated in Athens and in some Ionian cities in honor of Apollo on the 6th and 7th of the month Thargelion (= May-June). On the 6th a purification (καθαρμός) and a sacrifice to Demeter Chloe took place; while on the 7th, the actual day of the Thargelia, 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 φαρμακοί, whose task was to free the country from every guilt and impurity as emissaries. The two wore a collar of figs, one of black figs, representing men, the other of white figs, symbolizing women; they, chosen from among the poorest people (but not from among criminals), according to some vague hints in the sources (Helladius in Photius, Bibliotheca, 279; Istros in Harpokration, s. v. φαρμακοί) and in similarity to other cities (as, for example, in the Ionian Abdera, where a man was stoned "pro peccatis civium" after having been 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 among the crowd, with branches of fig and of other fruits, 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 purificatory day of the 6th, in the sanctuary of Ge and of Demeter Chloe, a ram and perhaps also a ewe were sacrificed to the latter goddess, besides a pig to the Moirai. In the procession of the following day, through the city were led the first-fruits of the fruits of the earth that had reached maturity, called precisely θάργηλα (cf. Etym. M. s. v.) and enclosed in a vessel also called θάργηλος (Hesychius).
The rustic character of the Thargelia is moreover quite well clarified by a scholium of Aristophanes (Knights, 730) according to which also on the occasion of the Thargelia (as already in the Pyanepsia, in the Panathenaea [v.], etc.) the εἰρεσιώνη was led in procession, that is a branch of laurel (or olive) adorned with woolen fillets, to which the first-fruits of the fruits were hung. Finally, near the temple of Pythian Apollo, under the direction of the first archon and with the participation of great choruses of men and boys, the agon was celebrated.
The Thargelia, therefore, festivals of notable importance in the Attic calendar, in their two days of celebration contained two profoundly different religious concepts: cathartic, that is purificatory, the first (expulsion of the φαρμακοί); stimulation of the beneficent forces of nature the second (sacrifice to Demeter Chloe, procession of the first-fruits, εἰρεσιώνη). But the cathartic concept at a certain moment must have amalgamated with that of fertility, as demonstrated by the fact that the φαρμακοί at the moment of their expulsion, as has been seen, were beaten with branches of fig and of other fruits.
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Cesare D'Onofrio