Terracotta lekythos (oil flask) depicting a girl on a swing

Red-figure terracotta lekythos depicting a woman pushing a girl on a swing, with a youth sitting on an altar, and Hermes.

The Aiora and Anthesteria, Athenian festivals dedicated to Dionysos, god of wine, included girls swinging. The Hermaia, celebrating Hermes, the messenger god, featured athletes; the youth here holds a strigil (scraper), and Hermes himself stands by a column suggesting a sacred precinct. The Athenian festivals may have had Apulian counterparts.

The Aiora, an ancient Athenian ritual whose aition (origin story or myth) narrates the story of Erigone, a young maiden. The myth is set in Attica, where Dionysus arrives and is hosted by Icarius. In exchange for Icarius' hospitality, Dionysus teaches him how to make wine. The man offers the wine to some local shepherds who, unaware of the possible effects of alcohol, become intoxicated and kill Icarius, who they unreasonably suspected to have attempted to kill them. The shepherd attempt to hide Icarius' body, burying him under a tree. Icarius' daughter Erigone, guided by her dog Maera, finds her father's grave and, in a fit of despair, hangs herself on the same tree. Before dying, Erigone casts a curse: all of the maidens in Athens have to undergo her same destiny. In a fit of madness, they all hang themselves after an uncontrollable madness and death wish overcomes them. When asked to comment on this terrible event, the Oracle of Delphi prophesied that Erigone's death must be atoned. For this reason, young maidens in Athens make swings, and by swinging, each one of them will replay the maiden's death, without any actual suicides. So writes Hyginus:

Qui quod ea se suspenderat, instituerunt uti tabula interposita pendentes funibus se iactarent, ut qui pendens uento mouetur. Quod sacrificium sollemne instituerunt. Itaque et priuatim et publice faciunt, et id Aletidas appellant, quod eam patrem persequentem cum cane, ut ignotam et solitariam oportebat, mendicam appellabant, quas Graeci antidas nominant.

'So since she hanged herself, they instituted a practice of swinging themselves on ropes with bars of wood attached, so that the one hanging could be moved by the wind. They instituted this as a solemn ceremony, and they perform it both privately and publicly, and call it alétis, aptly terming her mendicant who, unknown and lonely, sought for her father with the dog. The Greeks call such people alétides.'

This 'symbolic death', the Aiora - manifested by swinging - was included in one of the principal Attican wine festivals, the so-called Anthesteria. At the center of this wine festival was the celebration of the maturing of the wine and the cyclical spring rebirth. The festival corresponds to the period between February and March, and on the last day of the festivities all of the Aiora rituals were brought to a conclusion: the Athenian young women would sit on the swing in memory of Erigone's unfortunate destiny. Meanwhile, everybody sang a characteristic song called Aletis (the errant), a clear reference to the young woman's wandering in search for her father.

Greek, South Italian, Apulian. ca. 375–350 BCE. Associated in style with the Lecce Painter

Met Museum, New York (13.232.3)

Note: part of the text above is excerpted from 'The Swinging Woman. Phaedra and Swinging in Classical Greece' by Federica Doria and Marco Giuman (2016).

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Taken on: October 29, 2024

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swinging

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Attica

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Anthesteria

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spring

ritual

Aletis

Greek

South Italian

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Lecce Painter

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