THEOPHA´NIA
THEOPHA´NIA (
θεοφάνια,
Hdt. 1.54; Poll. 1.34), a festival celebrated
at Delphi. A. Mommsen, with tolerable certainty, identifies the festival on
the 7th of the Delphic month Bysios (= approximately February), mentioned
(without name) by Plutarch,
Qu. Gr. 9, as the birthday of
Apollo, and also the sole day in ancient times for consulting the oracle
(probably the
αἰσία ἡμέρα of
Eur. Ion 421). [See
ORACULUM p. 282 a.] The word itself signifies the
manifestation of the deity =
ἐπιφάνεια τοῦ
θεοῦ. (Mommsen notes that the calendar of the Greek Church still
has
τὰ ἅγ. Θεοφάνεια: in the Western
Church
Theophania was applied to Christmas Day as late as the
4th century.) The deity manifested at Delphi is clearly Apollo, and the time
of the year agrees with its being a festival for the opening of spring,
symbolised by the return or the new birth of the god of light. Further it is
to be noticed that Plutarch (
de
εἰ ap. Delph. 9) assigns the three winter
months in the Delphic year to Dionysus, and the remaining nine to Apollo:
hence it appears that the 7th of Bysios marks the beginning of the
Apollinean year and the end of the Bacchic.
The ceremonies of the day are nowhere precisely stated, but can be pieced out
as follows:--1. A procession with laurel boughs: this was. the custom at the
time when oracles were given at Delphi, and belonged at other places besides
to the day marked as Apollo's birthday (cf. Schol.
ad Hes.
Op. 777,
Ἀθηναῖοι
ταύτην τιμῶσι δαφνηφοροῦντες). Similarly at Rome the return
of Mars (for whose connexion with Apollo see Roscher,
Apollon u.
Mars) was honoured by fresh laurel boughs (
Ov. Fast. 3.13). 2. The prayers and offerings belonging to the
oracular day, for which see
ORACULUM p. 282 b. 3. A feast with (
a）
offerings of the cake called
φθοΐς; the
day was, according to Plutarch, called
πολύφθοον, which, though he gives another interpretation, is
clearly from
φθοΐς: (
b) libations of wine. Herodotus (
1.51）
speaks of a huge silver bow l at Delphi, containing 600 amphorae, which
ἐπικίρναται ὑπὸ Δελφῶν
θεοφανίοισι. Other myths, especially those relating to the flight
or exile of Apollo, his purification and return, may possibly find their
representation in this
[p. 2.825]festival: on these myths we
can only refer here to the discussion in A. Mommsen and Roscher. (A.
Mommsen,
Delphica, pp. 280-297; Roscher,
Lexikon, p. 426.)
[
L.S] [
G.E.M]
