Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

276 Daimon and Hero [ch.
the ancients both for food and drink, for grain, for oil, for wine.
The cellars of the palace of Knossos have disclosed rows of these
pithoi. I have elsewhere 1 shown that the pithoi are also grave-
jars, out of which the ghosts of dead men might nutter forth and
to which they could return as to their homes. But for the
present it is as storehouses of food and especially wine that the
pithoi concern us. At the Pithoigia these wine-jars were opened
for the first time, as the wine made in the autumn would
then just be drinkable. Proklos on Hesiod 2 tells us that 'the
festival was an ancestral one, and that it was not allowable to
prevent either household slaves or hired servants from partaking
of the wine.' By this time no doubt it was a family rather than
a gentile festival; anyhow it was collective, of the whole house 3
,
and it was ancient. It was, Proklos says, 'in honour of Dionysos';
he prudently adds 'that is, of his wine.'
Food and drink, and the desire magically to increase and safe-
guard food and drink, are earlier than the gods. Plutarch 4 in his
account of the Pithoigia lets us watch the transit from one to the
other. He is speaking of the local Theban Pithoigia over which
his father had presided and at which he had been present as a
boy.
On the eleventh day of the month (Anthesterion) they broached the newwine
at Athens, calling the day Pithoigia. And from of old it seems it was
their custom to offer some of it as a libation before drinking of it, with the
prayer that the use of the drug might be rendered harmless and beneficial to
them. But by us (Boeotians) the month is called Prostaterios, and it is our
custom on the sixth day of the month to sacrifice to the Agathos Daimon and
then taste the new wine after the West Wind has done blowing.
And again later 5 he says those who are the first to drink of the
new wine drink it in Anthesterion after the winter, and we call
that day by the name of the Agathos Daimon but the Athenians
call it Pithoigia.
The nature of the 'sacrifice' is clear. Plutarch uses the
1 Proleg. p. 43.
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