THESMOPHORIA. - A Greek festival connected with the fertility of the Earth Mother (v.) and therefore with that of woman. It was celebrated throughout the Greek world in honor of Demeter, who was worshipped under the aspect of Thesmophoros, that is, giver of the Law, insofar as she was the institutor of agriculture.
The details of the T. are obscure; its course is better known in Attica, where the festival lasted 3 days. It took place around the middle (11th-13th) of the month Pyanopsion, that is, at the time of the winter sowing, and was celebrated only by married women (men and girls were rigorously excluded), two of whom for each deme organized it, while their husbands were required to bear its expenses.
On the first day, called «Ανοδος», that is, «ascent» (sometimes called «ἀθοδος», «descent»), it seems to have consisted in the ascent (and therefore the return) of the matrons in procession to the Thesmophorion, situated (Aristophanes, Thesmoph., 624), on the hill of the Pnyx, where they stopped beneath huts of branches built especially for the purpose. The second day of the T., the most important one, was called Νεστειά, that is, of the «fast», during which no sacrifice was made and it was a day of mourning. On this same day the women drew from a pit the Shira, that is, the remains of piglets and of pine branches and other symbols of fertility, buried there on the occasion of the festival of the Skirophoria (v.), celebrated 4 months earlier; remains which, mixed with the new seed, seem to have been put back into the ground to invoke greater luxuriance for the earth. On the third day, finally, called Καλλιγένεια, the women celebra-
they offered sacrifices for the purpose of obtaining precisely a happy and numerous progeny.
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Cesare D'Onofrio