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

416 From Daimon to Olympian [ch.
we have only one source for it, Plutarch 1 himself. And he, though
it is but little, tells us just enough for its understanding.
Most of the ceremonies of the Herois have a mystical reason which is
known to the Thyiades, but, from the rites that are done in public, one may
conjecture it to be a ' Bringing up of Semele.'
The Herois was a woman's festival. Plutarch of course could
not be present at the secret ceremonies of the Thyiades, but his
friend Thyia, their president, would tell him all a man might know.
Part of the ceremonial he says was public.
Charila. The third of the ennaeteric festivals, the Charila, is
the manifest counterpart of the Herois, and again Plutarch is our
sole but sufficient source. After recounting the aetiological myth
he gives us the ritual facts 2 .
The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and pulse
to all, both strangers and citizens. And the child-image of Charila is brought
in. When they had all received their share, the king struck the image with
his sandal, and the leader of the Thyiades lifted the image and took it away
to a precipitous place and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and
buried it, where they buried Charila when she hanged herself.
Charila is manifestly, whether enacted in spring or autumn, a
festival of the type of ' Carrying out the Death.' Charila is beaten
and hanged and buried in some chasm. The nearest analogies in
Greece are the pharmakos ceremonies and the 'Driving out of
Hunger 3 .' Like the Herois the Charila was managed by the
Thyiades and was therefore a woman's festival.
It is however the Herois that most instructs us. It never
seems to have occurred to Plutarch, as it would to a modern
mythologist, that, because a festival was called Herois, it must
have to do with a mortal ' heroine.' From the rites known to him
he promptly conjectured that it was a 'Bringing up of Semele.'
Semele, it is acknowledged, is but a Thraco-Phrygian form of
Gaia.
' The Bringing up of Semele ' is but the Anodos of Gaia
or of Kore the Earth-Maiden. It is the return of the vegetation
or Year-spirit in the spring.
1 Qu. Gr. xn. ttjs Se 'Hpwt'Sos to, irXe?