Note 210 — Chapter II · TABOOED DAYS AFTER A DEATH AND ON RELATED OCCASIONS

On the Anthesteria, from an anthropological standpoint, see particularly Miss Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1903, pp. 32 sqq., 49 sqq. Dr. L. R. Farnell thinks that only in the ritual for the third and final day of the Anthesteria have we a genuine ceremony of ghost-riddance, this day falling so near the Dionysiac celebration as to become attached to the latter as a mournful finale (The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford, 1906-1910, v, 215 sqq.). But, on this view, it is difficult to see why the second day, the Choes, should have been expressly mentioned as “polluted” (μιαρά), and why the first day, the Pithoigia, should have been described as “totally unlucky” (ἐς τὸ πᾶν άποφράς).