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Karneia Festival

(Coin depicting Apollo with horns)

The Karneia festival is believed to be a part agrarian part military festival to Apollo Karneios (of flocks and herds), celebrated in Sparta, the Peloponnese, and other Dorian states. It was celebrated for 9 days, from 7th-15th, in the month of Karneios (previously thought to be Athenian Metageitnion, but closer to Boedromion according to this calendar). Apollo Karneios appears in iconography with the horns of a ram (pictured above).

CARNEIUS (Karneios), a surname of Apollo under which he was worshipped in various parts of Greece, especially in Peloponnesus, as at Sparta and Sicyon, and also in Thera, Cyrene, and Magna Graecia. (Paus. iii. 13. § 2, &c., ii. 10. § 2, 11. § 2; Pind. Pyth. v. 106; Plut. Sympos. viii. 1; Paus. iii. 24. § 5, iv. 31. § 1, 33. § 5.) The origin of the name is explained in different ways. Some derived it from Carnus, an Acarnanian soothsayer, whose murder by Hippotes provoked Apollo to send a plague into the army of Ilippotes while he was on his march to Peloponnesus. Apollo was afterwards propitiated by the introduction of the worship of Apollo Carneius. (Paus. iii. 13. § 3; Schol. ad Theocrit. v. 83.) Others believed that Apollo was thus called from his favourite Carnus or Carneius, a son of Zeus and Europa, whom Leto and Apollo had brought up. (Paus. l. c. ; Hesych. s. v. Karneios.) Several other attempts to explain the name are given in Pausanias and the Scholiast on Theocritus. It is evident, however, that the worship of the Carneian Apollo was very ancient, and was probably established in Peloponnesus even before the Dorian conquest. Respecting the festival of the Carneia see Dict. of Ant. s. v. Karneia. (Theoi.com)

To celebrate the agrarian nature of the festival, five youths (Καρνεᾶται karnaetai) were chosen from each tribe to serve under a priest to oversee the proceedings of the festival for 4 years. A group of runners called σταφυλοδρόμοι ("running with bunches of grapes in their hands") would pursue another man (or, later, animal) who was adorned with garlands. If the man was caught, this was a good omen, but if not the city expecting to fare poorly in their coming endeavours.

For the military portion:

In the second part of the festival nine tents were set up in the country, in each of which nine citizens, representing the phratries (or obae), feasted together in honour of the god. [...] According to Demetrius of Scepsis (in Athenaeus iv. 141), the Carnea was an imitation of life in camp. (Brittanica)

It is believed the festival also included ram sacrifices and musical performances.

Poets shall sing often in your praise both on the seven-stringed mountain tortoise-shell and in songs unaccompanied by the lyre when at Sparta the month of Carnea comes circling round and the moon is aloft the whole night long, and also in rich, gleaming Athens. Such is the theme for song that you have left for poets by your death. (Euripides, Alcestis 449)

Dorians had an armistice agreement throughout the Karneia festival, similar to the hieromenia (sacred month) of the various Games, and none were allowed to wage war during this time. In 419BCE, the Argives avoided this by manipulating the calendar; they called every day the 27th of the month before Karneios so they could continue marching and invade Epidaurus. (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 5.54) This is the reason for the late arrival of the Spartans at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), and why King Leonidas was sent to Thermopylae with inadequate troops (480 BCE).

[... the Lakedaemonians] resolved to send help to the Athenians, but they could not do this immediately, for they were unwilling to break the law. It was the ninth day of the rising month, and they said that on the ninth they could not go out to war until the moon's circle was full. (Herodotus 6.106 (also Pausanias 1.28.4))

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