Adonia
The Adonia (Greek: Ἀδώνια) was a festival celebrated annually by women in ancient Greece to mourn the death of Adonis, the consort of Aphrodite. It is best attested in classical Athens, though other sources provide evidence for the ritual mourning of Adonis elsewhere in the Greek world, including Hellenistic Alexandria and Argos in the second century AD.
According to Ronda R. Simms in her article, "Mourning and Community at the Athenian Adonia", the celebration of the Adonia was the only evidence that was found about worship of Adonis in Athens, as of 1997. There were no temples, statues, or priests in worship to Adonis.[1]
Athenian festival
In Athens, the Adonia took place annually,[2] and was organised and celebrated by women. It was one of a number of Athenian festivals which were celebrated solely by women and addressed sexual or reproductive subjects – others included the Thesmophoria, Haloa, and Skira.[3] Unlike these other festivals, however, the Adonia was not state-organised, or part of the official state calendar of religious celebration.[4] In fact, it was not found to be celebrated by any official cults, like the cult of Bendis, or foreign cults, whose participants were mostly non-natives, like Isis.[5] Prostitutes, respectable women, non-citizens and citizens alike celebrated the Adonia.[6]
Also unlike the Thesmophoria, the Adonia was never celebrated in a designated area.[5] Over the course of the festival, Athenian women took to the rooftops of their houses. They danced, sang, and ritually mourned the death of Adonis. They planted "Gardens of Adonis" – lettuce and fennel seeds, planted in potsherds – which sprouted before withering and dying. After the rooftop celebrations, the women descended to the streets with these Gardens of Adonis, and small images of him; they then conducted a mock funeral procession, before ritually burying the images and the remains of the gardens at sea or in springs.[7] The rites observed during the festival are not otherwise paralleled in ancient Greek religion; like Adonis himself they probably originated in the Near East.[8]
Date
The date of the Adonia at Athens is uncertain, with ancient sources contradicting one another. Aristophanes, in his
Modern scholars disagree on which of these sources is correct. Many agree with Plutarch, and put the festival around midsummer, though Dillon argues that Aristophanes' placement of the festival near the beginning of spring is "without question" correct.[2] Some scholars, such as James Fredal, suggest that there was in fact no fixed date for the Adonia to be celebrated.[11]
Gardens of Adonis
The main feature of the festival at Athens were the "Gardens of Adonis",[12] broken pieces of terracotta which had lettuce and fennel seeds sown in them.[6] These seeds sprouted, but soon withered and died.[6] Though most scholars say that these gardens withered due to being exposed to the heat of the summer,[13] Dillon, who believes that the Adonia was held in the spring, says that the plants instead failed because they could not take root in the shallow soil held by the terracotta shards.[6] In support of this, he cites Diogenianus,[14] who says that in the Gardens of Adonis, seedlings "wither quickly because they have not taken root".[15] In ancient Greece, the phrase "Gardens of Adonis" was used proverbially to refer to something "trivial and wasteful".[12]
The symbolism of the Gardens of Adonis is also widely debated: according to James George Frazer, the Gardens of Adonis were supposed to be a sort of ritual performed in order to promote a good harvest, that the actual crops were to grow fast like the little gardens.[16] To John J. Winkler the gardens were meant to represent how men had very little power when it came to regeneration in either plants or humans.[17][18]
Purposes of the Gardens
There have also been debates on what the woman did with the gardens. Most assume they put the gardens out on their rooftops to wither and die, in order to symbolize how Adonis "sprouted and died quickly". Simms believes that the gardens were made to be used as funerary biers for the little effigies of Adonis to be placed in. These little effigies were made so that the women could have something to focus their mourning towards, because this entire festival is supposed to mourn the loss of Adonis himself.[19]
Outside Athens
Outside of Athens, a celebration of Adonis is attested in Hellenistic Alexandria, in
The Phoenician text of the
References
- ^ Simms 1997, p. 123.
- ^ a b c Dillon 2003, p. 1.
- ^ Goff 2004, p. 121.
- ^ Dillon 2002, p. 109.
- ^ a b Simms 1997, p. 125.
- ^ a b c d Dillon 2002, p. 165.
- ^ Fredal 2002, p. 602.
- ^ Burnett 2012, p. 187.
- ^ Dillon 2003, pp. 8–9.
- ^ Dillon 2003, p. 7.
- ^ Fredal 2002, p. 603.
- ^ a b Goff 2004, p. 58.
- ^ Dillon 2002, p. 166.
- ^ Dillon 2003, p. 4.
- ^ Diogenianus, Παροιμιαι Δημωδεις, 1.14
- ^ Frazer 2012, pp. 236–237.
- ^ Keuls 1991.
- ^ Simms 1997, p. 128.
- ^ Simms 1997, p. 129.
- ^ Smith 2017.
- ^ Dillon 2003, p. 2.
- ^ Dillon 2002, p. 163.
- ^ Dillon 2003, pp. 2–3.
- ^ Reitzammer 2016, p. 28.
- ^ Schmidtz, Philip Ch. " Sempre Pyrgi: A retraction and a Reassessment of the Phoenician Text" in Le lamine di Pyrgi: Nuovi studi sulle iscizione in etrusco e in fenicio nel cinquantenario della scoperta eds. Vincenzo Bellelli and Paolo Xella. Verona, 2016. pp. 33-43
- ^ Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis. The Linen Book of Zagreb: A Comment on the Longest Etruscan Text. By L.B. VAN DER MEER. (Monographs on Antiquity.) Louvain: Peeters, 2007 p. 120-121
Works cited
- Burnett, Anne (2012). "Brothels, Boys, and the Athenian Adonia". Arethusa. 45 (2): 177–194. S2CID 162809295.
- Dillon, Matthew (2002). Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415202728.
- Dillon, Matthew (2003). "'Woe for Adonis' – but in Spring, not Summer". Hermes. 131 (1).
- Frazer, James George (2012) [1914]. The Golden Bough. Vol. 5 (3 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-20752-2.
- Fredal, James (2002). "Herm Choppers, the Adonia, and Rhetorical Action in Ancient Greece". College English. 64 (5): 590–612. JSTOR 3250755.
- Goff, Barbara (2004). Citizen Bacchae: Women's Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520239989.
- Keuls, Eva C. (1991). "Review: John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece". The American Historical Review. 96 (4). ISSN 1937-5239.
- Reitzammer, Laurialan (2016). The Athenian Adonia in Context. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299308209.
- Simms, Ronda R. (1997). "Mourning and Community at the Athenian Adonia". The Classical Journal. 93 (2): 121–141. JSTOR 3298134.
- Smith, Tyler Jo (2017). "Review: Laurialan Reitzammer, The Athenian Adonia in Context: The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice". Religious Studies Review. 43 (2): 163–164. ISSN 0319-485X.