The procession goes to the sanctuary of Athena Skiras in Phaleron where the
‘‘dinner’’ and the race must have taken place, and she is clearly an honorand of the
festival, but does it also honor Dionysus, from whose sanctuary the procession
departs? An inscribed arbitration document of the clan (genos) of the Salaminioi
published in 1938 (Sokolowski 1962: no. 19) threw a flood of light on Oschophoria
and on this question. ‘‘Skiras’’ is said to be an old name of Salamis, and there was a
major cult of Athena Skiras there. It emerged that the clan of Salaminians met in the
goddess’s sanctuary in Phaleron, provided her priestess, and was responsible for
choosing theo ̄schophoroianddeipnophoroifor the festival. That seems to put the
festival squarely in Athena’s column, especially when one observes that there is no
offering to Dionysus in the sacrificial calendar of the Salaminioi incorporated in the
inscription, and that the antiquarian tradition does not even know from which of the
Athenian sanctuaries of Dionysus the procession sets out. Nevertheless scholars still
resist the conclusion, pointing to the grapes, the transvestism, and the cryeleleu
(which Plutarch, Theseus22.4, tells us was given over the festival libations) as
unmistakably Dionysiac. There is in fact nothing very Dionysiac abouteleleu, which
is a war-cry or a cry of pain. Ritual transvestism is often said to be distinctively
Dionysiac, but there is very little early evidence for transvestism in cult of Dionysus
apart from this festival, whose principal honorand was certainly Athena. There is
abundant evidence in the form of surviving masks for people disguising themselves in
the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta, and in the Greek world what can certainly
be described as ritual transvestism was not confined to the cult of a single god
(Nilsson 1906:369–74). That leaves the grapes, which surely account for the depart-
ure from a sanctuary of Dionysus, but this is very much a secondary feature. It seems
possible that Athena Skiras, as special goddess of Salamis or of the clan, might be
associated with the prosperity of the fruits of the earth just as the principal festival of
Zeus Polieus, Dipolieia, is much concerned with the plow-ox and he is sometimes the
honorand, with or instead of Demeter, of the Proerosia, ‘‘pre-plowing,’’ festivals of
the Attic demes. The Salaminioi sacrifice a pregnant sheep to Athena Skiras (Soko-
lowski 1962: no. 19 line 92), a victim otherwise offered in the Greek world only to
goddesses (and one heroine) associated with fertility. At any rate the primary role of
Athena in the rite must limit the degree to which we can foreground the vinous aspect
of the festival, as the more prominent we make this the stranger it becomes that
Dionysus is not the sole or primary honorand. It is therefore self-defeating to press
the argument from the grapes to produce a more prominent role for Dionysus.
Perhaps the vine branch with clusters is just a conveniently portable specimen of
the fruits of the earth that was available at the season of Athena’s festival, but that
made a secondary link with Dionysus natural.
These problems in the interpretation of the festival may be illuminated by a
neglected detail in the etiological accounts of Demon and Proclus. Demon speaks of
Theseus keeping the two youths in shade, and the only description Proclus gives of
Theseus’ two assistants at the original rite is that they had been kept in shade; the noun
in Demon and the verb in Proclus are from the same Greek root. Paleness was regarded
as a characteristic of women kept, as by Athenian mores they ought to be kept, out of
public gaze, and vase-painters sharply distinguish pale women from tanned men.
Women would sometimes make themselves up with white lead, and we know
that the maidenkane ̄phoroi, ‘‘basket-bearers,’’ who led the magnificent procession of
Festivals 199