If new epigraphical evidence turns up it could change the picture as radically as that
from Erchia and Thorikos has. Before those inscriptions refuted them, scholars
concluded on the basis of holocaust (‘‘whole-burnt’’) offerings to Zeus Meilichios
attested by Xenophon (Anabasis7.8.4), a good classical source, that animals sacri-
ficed at Diasia were burnt whole. They sought support in the later evidence to which
we now turn. Two scholia on the second-century AD writer Lucian (107.15 and
110.27 Rabe) and a notice in the probably fifth-century AD lexicon of Hesychius
(delta 1312 Latte) tell us that Diasia was conducted ‘‘with a certain grimness.’’
The older standard works on Athenian festivals present this as sound information
ultimately derived from an authoritative source and as consonant with holocaust
sacrifice for Zeus Meilichios (Mommsen 1898:423–4; Deubner 1932:155–6; and
still Parke 1977:120). The second-century AD writer Plutarch, however, speaks ofhoi
polloienjoying themselves and reviving their spirits at Diasia as at the Kronia and
Panathenaea, ‘‘paying the price of purchased laughter to mimes and chorus-girls’’
(On Contentment20;Moralia 477d), and Lucian has Hermes recall ‘‘splendid
celebration of the Diasia’’ at the house of the rich Timon in the deme Kollytos
(Timon7). A dialogue falsely attributed to Lucian speaks of orators competing
for ears of wheat at Diasia (Charidemus1–3); this has been doubted, but such a
competition might well form part of a program of entertainment such as Plutarch
attests. There is no evidence for such entertainment in the classical period, but also
no reason to assume that nothing of the kind was then laid on. Lucian himself has
Zeus ask ‘‘why the Athenians have not celebrated the Diasia for so many years’’
(Icaromenippus24). Lucian lived for a long time in Athens, so this should mean that
the festival fell into desuetude (temporarily?) in the second century AD.
Some of what later writers such as Plutarch and Lucian tell us about festivals derives
ultimately from earlier antiquarian scholarship, as does most of what we are told by
scholiasts and lexicographers (who, however, also engage in inference and combin-
ation, often false, of their own). Among the richest repositories of such scholarship
are the scholia on the comedies of Aristophanes, and a scholion on Strepsiades’
mention of Diasia atClouds408 (Schol. vet.Clouds408c) is our sole source both
for the date of the festival (Anthesterion 23) and for the rather startling information
that the late second-century BC writer on festivals Apollonius of Acharnae (FGrH 365
fr. 5) ‘‘distinguishes Diasia from the festival of Meilichios.’’ That distinction cannot be
justified, but what prompted Apollonius to make it (if indeed the scholion toCloudsis
reporting him accurately) may have been a contrast between the jolly mood of Diasia –
accurately witnessed or reported from sources by Plutarch and Lucian, with whose
descriptions the haggis and toy-buying in Aristophanes seem consonant – and the
holocaust and (wholly) wineless offerings attested for Zeus Meilichios on other occa-
sions, and his ambivalent character, as reflected in his epithet, in general. Other
antiquarians may have come to the more modest conclusion that, despite the apparent
jollity of the festival, it must have been characterized by ‘‘a certain grimness,’’ and
Hesychius and the scholia on Lucian will be quoting them. The same scholion on
Clouds408 that gives us the date of the festival and quotes Apollonius of Acharnae
concludes with the statement ‘‘but the Diasia are the same as the Dipolieia [the festival
of Zeus Polieus],’’ which is wholly unaccountable misinformation. Such a blend of the
sound, the baffling, and the absurdly unsound is typical of ancient scholia and lexica,
and so alas typical also of a large part of our evidence for Greek festivals.
192 Scott Scullion