Thargelia
（
θαργήλια). The principal feast of Apollo in Athens, held
on the seventh day of the month Thargelion (May-June), the birthday of the god. Originally it
was connected with the ripening of the field-produce. A procession was formed, and the
first-fruits of the year were offered to Apollo, together with Artemis and the Horae. It was
at the same time an expiatory feast, at which a peculiar propitiatory sacrifice was offered,
which was to purify the State from all guilt, and avert the wrath of the god, lest he should
exercise his avenging and destroying power in burning up the harvest with parching heat, and
in visiting the people with pestilence. Two persons, condemned to death, a man and a woman, as
representatives of the male and female population, were led about with a garland of figs round
their necks to the sound of flutes and singing, and scourged with seaweed and with the
branches of a fig-tree. They were then sacrificed at a certain spot on the seashore, their
bodies burned, and the ashes cast into the sea. In later times they seem to have been
contented with throwing the victims (
φαρμακοί) from a height
into the sea, catching them as they fell, and banishing them from the country. Besides these
sacrifices, festal processions and choral contests between men and boys took place. At the
same time the great feast of Apollo was probably held at Delos, to which the Athenians sent a
sacred embassy in the ancient ship in which Theseus is said to have sailed to Crete, and which
was always kept in repair. See Preller,
Griechische Mythologie, i. 209; and A.
Mommsen,
Heortologie, 50, 53, 414-425.
