Pharm\u0101kos,\u00a0in Greek religion, is a human\u00a0scapegoat\u00a0used in certain state rituals. In\u00a0Athens, for example, a man and a woman who were considered ugly were selected as scapegoats each year. At the festival of the\u00a0Thargelia\u00a0in May or June, they were feasted, led round the town, beaten with green twigs, and driven out or killed with stones. The practice in\u00a0Colophon, on the coast of Asia Minor (the part of modern Turkey that lies in Asia) was described by the 6th-century-bc\u00a0poet Hipponax (fragments 5\u201311). An especially ugly man was honored by the community with a feast of figs, barley soup, and cheese. Then he was whipped with fig branches, with care that he was hit seven times on his phallus, before being driven out of town. (Medieval sources said that the Colophonian\u00a0pharm\u0101kos\u00a0was burned and his ashes scattered in the sea.) The custom was meant to rid the place annually of ill luck.<\/p>\n
The 5th-century Athenian practice of\u00a0ostracism\u00a0has been described as a rationalized and democratic form of the custom. The biblical practice of driving the scapegoat from the community, described in Leviticus 16, gave a name to this widespread custom, which was said by the French intellectual Ren\u00e9 Girard to explain the basis of all human societies.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/26133293-8bf2-4ad7-8a02-f572417a8592.jpg\")
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\nOf all the rotten luck!<\/em><\/p>\n