88

This article examines the political reverberations of the Athenian Festival of Thesmophoria, celebrated exclusively by women. It demonstrates how, in a ritual context, women might intrude upon the political space of men’s deliberations. Starting from a comparative analysis of some passages in Aristophanes’ Thesmoporiazusae and Aeschylus’s Eumenides, it will first review the hypotheses formulated by archaeologists about the physical location of the festival. It has been associated with the Pnyx or the Eleusinion; we propose to locate the celebration in the civinity of the Council of the Areopagus of Athens on the western side of the Acropolis, and on the very hill of the Areopagus. It will then compare the deliberative acts carried out by Athenian male citizens and the women’s rituals as described in representations of the Thesmophoria. It will explore the possibility that “deliberation” of a politico-judicial character enacted by women, as described in Aristophanes' play, reflects a possible women’s discourse which could be perceived as parallel or “similar” to that of men. Following a suggestion in the work of Christophe Faraone, it asks whether the feast of Thesmophoria could, in this context, constitute a place where Athenian women were concretely handling “justice”. In conclusion, reference will be made to possible alternative discourses produced by women in this space lying at the civic and political heart of the city.