Thargelia, in Greek religion, one of the chief festivals of Apollo, celebrated on the sixth and seventh days of Thargelion (May–June). According to classics scholar Walter Burkert, the festival was “common to, and characteristic of, Ionians and Athenians.” Basically a vegetation ritual onto which an expiatory rite was grafted, the festival was named after the first fruits, or the first bread from the new wheat.
Purification took place on the first day of the festival, so that the town and townspeople could make a fresh start. One or two human scapegoats were chosen for their ugliness (or other undesirable qualities). Those figures, known as pharmakoi (singular pharmakós, feminine pharmakis), were draped with figs, fed, led in procession through the city, whipped with vegetation (so as to transfer impurity to them), and driven out. Occasionally, as in times of heavy calamity, plague, or the like, the pharmakoi were sacrificed, usually either thrown into the sea or burned on a funeral pyre. Sometimes the pharmakoi were merely expelled from the city. On the second day of the festival, there was a thank offering, a procession, and the official registration of adopted persons.