to do so during the Olympics and was unsuccessful, ‘‘for the Athenians also have a very
great festival of Zeus Meilichios [‘‘Zeus who must and can be propitiated’’], the Diasia
as it is called, held outside the city, at which the peopleen massemake many sacrifices
not of ordinary sacrificial victims but of local offerings’’ (1.126.6). ‘‘Ordinary sacrifi-
cial victims’’ (hiereia) certainly means animals, and the scholion or ancient commen-
tary on the passage plausibly explains ‘‘local offerings’’ as ‘‘cakes formed in the shape
of animals.’’ Hence it is surprising to find that in Aristophanes’Clouds(408–11)
Strepsiades describes the explosion of the haggis (or perhaps black pudding) he was
roasting for his relatives at the Diasia, and it was much more surprising when two
inscriptions published in 1963 and 1983 clearly attested animal sacrifice at the Diasia.
The mid-fourth-century sacrificial calendar of the deme Erchia (Sokolowski 1969:
no.18a lines 37–42) contains this prescription: ‘‘In the month Anthesterion, at the
festival Diasia, in the city at Agrai, to Zeus Meilichios a sheep, sacrificed without use of
wine up to [the point at which] the innards [are roasted], costing 12 drachmae.’’ A late
fifth-century calendar of the deme Thorikos has a similar entry, also under the month
Anthesterion: ‘‘At the Diasia, to Zeus Meilichios a sheep, to be sold’’ (SEG33 [1983]
147.35). These four passages, together with Strepsiades’ statement that he bought a
toy cart for his son Pheidippideson the occasion of the Diasia (Clouds864), arethe sum
of our evidence from the classical period. It is a typical dossier: brief allusions in drama
and historiography, in the latter with very concise explanation for the benefit of
non-Athenian readers, and some mention in inscriptions, typically involving only
concrete details of offerings and procedures relevant to the normally quite narrow
administrative (often financial) purposes of a state, deme, or private organization in
drawing up the document. The Erchia inscription confirmed the old conjecture that
the principal celebration of Diasia was at Agrai on the Ilissus, a location ‘‘outside the
city’’ from the perspective of the Athenian Thucydides, ‘‘in the city’’ from that of
the Erchians. The Thorikians, unlike the Erchians, celebrated Diasia in their own deme
rather than at Agrai, which supports the assumption that Strepsiades is recalling a
celebration in his own remote deme, Kikynna. As often, however, even this modicum
of classical evidence also presents us with a quandary.
Was it or was it not usual to sacrifice animals at Diasia? The apparent implication of
Thucydides’ description is that animal victims were not sacrificed, but rather the
inexpensive cakes (perhaps, as the scholiast suggests, in the shape of animals) that
were a standard offering of those who could not afford animals, many of whom must
have been present at this popular event. Perhaps all he means, however – though it is
not a very obvious way of saying it – is that, in comparison with cakes, relatively few
animals were sacrificed. The deme Erchia and doubtless other demes sent a delegation
to Agrai with a sheep which was to be eaten. The procedure was different at Thorikos,
where it is specified that the victim is ‘‘to be sold,’’ which must mean (as Parker
1987b:145 suggests) that after the innards are eaten the flesh is not distributed or
eaten but sold, presumably to a butcher. At Thorikos only the innards are eaten, and
they are highlighted by the Erchian procedure; this perhaps coheres with Aristophanes’
evidence for consumption of innards in the form of a haggis. Distinctive festival foods
were certainly known – Athenian festivals such as Pyanepsia, Thargelia, and Galaxia
take their names from vegetable porridges – and one might hazard the guess that
haggis was the special dish of the Diasia, were it not that the meat of the Erchian
offering was apparently eaten.
Festivals 191