Pharmakos (Greek φαρμακος) in Ancient Greek religion was a kind of scapegoat. On the first day of the Thargelia, a festival of Apollo at Athens, two men, the Pharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacrificed as an expiation, and at an earlier date were actually sacrificed.

Walter Burkert shows it to be a bit more complicated than that. There was an older tradition, which comes down to us through the poetry of Hipponax that humans were sacrificed after being fed well, and their ashes scattered to the ocean. This was a purification ritual. Burkert writes of this older tradition, that these people were chosen because of their "ugliness" or un-seemly looks. It was a form of societal catharsis. The later kind of pharmakos, as a scapegoat, ostracised by the use of pottery pieces and voted upon by the citizens, was a way of sending someone out of the commnunity, as opposed to human sacrifice, forever or for a fixed time. Usually it was someone who disturbed the harmony of the community or more capricious than that.

Jane Ellen Harrison wrote that in the Eleusinian Mysteries, "Each man took with him his own pharmakos, a young pig" in the rites of purification in Eleusis in ancient Greece.

The Pharmakos and Pharmacology

The term "pharmakos" later became the term "pharmacos" which refers to a prisoner, a magician, or a sorcerer. A variation of this term is "pharmacon" (φάρμακον) meaning either a magical substance or drug. From this, the modern term "pharmacology" emerged.

Footnotes

• Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, p.82
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p.152.
• Daniel J. Calcagnetti, Neuropharmacology: From Cellular Receptors and Neurotransmitter Synthesis to Neuropathology & Drug Addiction, First Edition. p.2

References

• Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985.
• Daniel J. Calcagnetti, "Neuropharmacology: From Cellular Receptors and Neurotransmitter Synthesis to Neuropathology & Drug Addiction", First Edition, 2006.
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1921.
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1908.
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: a Study of the social Origin of Greek Religion, 1921.
• Leonard Whibley, MA, A companion to Greek studies. Cambridge University Press.

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