The documentation provided by some of the Aegean islands gives us the opportunity to widen our focus and put to the test the data that the Athenian dossier allows us to reconstruct. This is the case for the island of Delos, which serves as a reagent for the reflections on " megaron et porcelets " that the title of the lesson announces. The accounts and inventories of Delos offer some insight into the structure of the local Thesmophorion, which included a tamieion, an architectural space housing precious items, and a megaron. Analysis of the latter term in archaic poetry, prose and inscriptions is essential to understanding what type of structure was associated with sanctuaries of Demeter where a megaron is attested, and why the cavities where piglets were supposedly precipitated during Thesmophoria were called megara. The lecture closes with a preliminary evocation of a Delian festival called Nyktophylaxia, celebrated in the middle of winter. It involved a full sow and clearly required the opening and closing of the megaron located in the Thesmophorion.
11:00 - 12:00
