Pharmakos

A pharmaks (Greek: , plural pharmakoi) ual, a form of societal catharsis.[1] Some scholars have
in Ancient Greek religion was the ritualistic sacrice or connected the practice of ostracism, in which a promi-
exile of a human scapegoat or victim. nent politician was exiled from Athens after a vote using
pottery pieces, with the pharmakos custom. However, the
ostracism exile was only for a xed time, as opposed to
1 Ritual the nality of the pharmakos execution or expulsion.
Pharmakos is also used as a vital term in Derrid-
A slave, a cripple or a criminal was chosen and expelled ian deconstruction. In his essay Platos Pharmacy,[2]
from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion Derrida deconstructs several texts by Plato, such as
or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis. It was believed Phaedrus, and reveals the inter-connection between the
that this would bring about purication. On the rst day word chain pharmakeia-pharmakon-pharmakeus and the
of the Thargelia, a festival of Apollo at Athens, two men, notably absent word pharmakos. In doing so, he attacks
the Pharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacriced as an the boundary between inside and outside, declaring that
expiation. the outside (pharmakos, never uttered by Plato) is always-
already present right behind the inside (pharmakeia-
Some scholia state that pharmakoi were actually sacri- pharmakon-pharmakeus). As a concept, Pharmakos can
ced (thrown from a cli or burned), but many modern be said to be related to other Derridian terms such as
scholars reject this, arguing that the earliest source for trace.
the pharmakos (the iambic satirist Hipponax) shows the
pharmakoi being beaten and stoned, but not executed. A
more plausible explanation would be that sometimes they
were executed and sometimes not, depending on the atti- 3 Notes
tude of the victim. For instance, a deliberate unrepentant
murderer would most likely be put to death. [1] Walter Burkert. Greek Religion, p. 82.

In Aesop in Delphi (1961), Anton Wiechers discussed the
parallels between the legendary biography of Aesop (in
which he is unjustly tried and executed by the Delphi-
ans) and the pharmakos ritual. For example, Aesop is
grotesquely deformed, as was the pharmakoi in some tra-
ditions; and Aesop was thrown from a cli, as was the
pharmakoi in some traditions.
Gregory Nagy, in Best of the Achaeans (1979), compared
Aesops pharmakos death to the worst of the Achaeans
in the Iliad, Thersites. More recently, both Daniel Ogden,
The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece (1997) and Todd
Compton, Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, War-
rior and Hero (2006) examine poet pharmakoi. Comp-
ton surveys important poets who were exiled, executed or
suered unjust trials, either in history, legend or Greek
or Indo-European myth.
2 Modern interpretations
Walter Burkert and Ren Girard have written inuential
modern interpretations of the pharmakos rite. Burkert
shows that humans were sacriced or expelled after be-
ing fed well, and, according to some sources, their ashes
were scattered to the ocean. This was a purication rit-
[2] Dissemination, translated by Barbara Johnson, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1981
4 References
Bremmer, Jan N., Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient
Greece, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology,
Vol. 87. (1983), pp. 299320.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1985.
Burkert, Walter, Structure and History in Greek
Mythology. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979, 59-77.
Calcagnetti, Daniel J., Neuropharmacology: From
Cellular Receptors and Neurotransmitter Synthesis
to Neuropathology & Drug Addiction, First Edi-
tion, 2006.
Compton, Todd, The Pharmakos Ritual: Testimo-
nia.
Compton, Todd, Victim of the Muses: Poet as
Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and

1
2 4 REFERENCES

Indo-European Myth and History. Washington,

D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies/Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2006.

Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination, translated by

Barbara Johnson, Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1981.
Fiore, Robert L., Alarcons El dueno de las estrel-
las: Hero and Pharmakos, Hispanic Review, Vol.
61, No. 2, Earle Homage Issue (Spring, 1993), pp.
185199.
Frazer, James. The Golden Bough. Part VI. The
Scapegoat, pp. 252.

Girard, Ren. The Scapegoat. Trans. Y. Freccero.

Baltimore, 1986.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Epilegomena to the Study of

Greek Religion, 1921.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the Study of

Greek Religion, 1908.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: a Study of the Social

Origin of Greek Religion, 1921.

Hirayama, Koji, Stoning in the Pharmakos Ritual,

Journal of Classical Studies, XLIX(2001), Classical
Society of Japan, Kyoto University.
Hughes, Dennis, Human Sacrice in Ancient Greece,
London 1991, pp. 139165.
Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts
of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. The Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1979, pp. 28090 in print
edition.
Nilsson, Martin P., Greek Popular Religion, 1940.
See the discussion of the Thargelia in the chapter
Rural Customs and Festivals.

Ogden, Daniel, The Crooked Kings of Ancient

Greece London 1997, pp. 1546.

Parker, Robert, Miasma, Pollution and Purication

in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1983, pp. 2426, 257-280.

Rinella, Michael A., Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Cul-

ture, and Identity in Ancient Athens. Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2010, 73-74.
Whibley, Leonard, MA, A Companion to Greek
Studies. Cambridge University Press.
Wiechers, A. Aesop in Delphi. Meisenheim am
Glam 1961.
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