Skirophoria

Skirophoria, annual Athenian festival held at threshing time on the 12th of Skirophorion (roughly June/July). Under the cover of a large white umbrella, which symbolized the protection of the Attic soil against the Sun’s burning rays, the priestess of Athena (city goddess of Athens) and the priests of Poseidon (god of the sea) and Helios (sun god) walked from the Acropolis to a place called Skiron, which was a precinct outside Athens on the road to Eleusis. It was named for Skiros, an Eleusinian seer who died in the battle between Eleusis and Athens (in which the Athenian king Erechtheus also lost his life). The solemnity, which was probably a companion festival to the Thesmophoria, may have been held in honour of the goddess Athena; more reliable traditions, however, indicate that it was in honour of Demeter, the goddess of fruitfulness, and her daughter Kore (Persephone). The Skira festival was one of the few days when Athenian women organized an event on their own. In Aristophanes’ Ekklesiazousai the Skirophoria was the period during which the women plotted to take over the Athenian assembly.

Two days after the festival, on the 14th of Skirophorion, the ceremonial ox slaying, or Bouphoria, took place. Oxen were driven around an altar on which grain offerings had been placed. The first ox to eat the offerings was killed with an ax; its slayer ran away. A trial followed, at the end of which the ax was found guilty and thrown into the sea. The ox’s hide was stuffed and yoked to a plow. Thus was the social order symbolically dissolved and then reconstituted.