The worship of Demeter and her daughter spread
throughout the Greek world, including southern Italy. Although Demeter’s main
festival, the Thesmophoria, was celebrated at different times of the year in
different places, the ritual offerings were fairly similar throughout, as were
the religious aspects the goddess embodied.¹⁰¹ The Thesmophoria was the most
widespread Greek cult because of its connection with agriculture and fertility.
In Attica this festival was distinct from the Eleusinian Mysteries, even though
both centered on the rape of Persephone (and the pigs that got lost in the
chasm of the earth that swallowed her up.)
In Macedonia,
the site of Pella, where a Thesmophorion has been excavated and where the cult
of Persephone is also attested, was a premier locus of worship. The site of
Dion had its own Demeter sanctuary, and there is no doubt that Macedonian women
worshipped both Demeter and Persephone.¹⁰² Unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries, the
Thesmophoria festival was open only to women (though some of the finds at Pella
at least raised a small possibility of male participation).
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To return to the Vergina hunt, scholars have
underscored the privileged status of the participants. Andronikos took their
relative ages to show that “Philip II” is accompanied in the lion hunt by his
Royal Pages.¹⁵⁶ Miltiades Hatzopoulos charted a graded status system by way of
perceived age. The three completely nude figures on the left side of the
composition — two involved in the hunting of deer, one participating in the hunting
of a boar — are all Royal Pages, but the boar hunter accomplishes his
graduation to a superior stage en route to manhood. The fully dressed (here
only the man with nets, if we exclude “Philip” and “Alexander”) have reached
that goal. Hatzopoulos considered those dressed with only a chlamys to be
ephebes (between the ages of eighteen and twenty), the intermediate step in the
process, undergoing intensified training in the art of warfare.¹⁵⁷
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Cohen,Ada.Art in the era of Alexander the Great:paradigms of manhood and their cultural traditions.Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
