Women in Classical Athens had a notoriously sheltered life, likely rarely leaving the home unaccompanied. An important exception was the extensive (but not terribly well understood) calendar of all-female festivals. Our understanding of these festivals are problematic, hampered by the surviving evidence: literary and artistic descriptions made by men, who would have had little first-hand experience about what actually went on….
With that caveat in mind, a poorly understood female ritual is still the most convincing interpretation of this scene on an Attic red-figure pelike (ca. 440-430 B.C.) in the British Museum. And it’s a pretty intriguing scene! A girl or compactly proportioned woman leans over to sprinkle something from a basket onto a bed of four phalloi, springing upright from the ground-line like eager tulips.
What exactly is happening here, is anyone’s guess. Is it a rite of the Thesmophoria, the Haloa, the Adonia or another fertility ritual undertaken by Athenian women? Or an inexplicable flight of fancy by an intrigued male painter? In any case, a jolly reminder of renewal and growth.
