The Anthesteria: Athens’ Darkly Joyous New Wine Festival

Every year, as winter gave way to spring and the ice melted, the people of Athens experienced a peculiar transformation in their city. The temples were shrouded, their doors sealed with thick pine resin. Relatives, children, and even slaves were forbidden to walk the streets. Inside their homes, families gathered around tables, drinking wine in a silent competition until drunkenness overtook them. Then, the Anthesteria—the festival of new wine—began in earnest.

This was a time of revelry and abandon. Three-year-old children wore flower crowns and clutched tiny wine jugs, stumbling through the celebrations. The streets, once empty, now echoed with laughter and song as the city indulged in food, drink, and pleasure. Yet beneath the festivities lurked a darker undercurrent. As night fell, the people believed that malevolent spirits, the Keres, roamed freely. Only at sunset could the Athenians finally shout in relief: “Away with you, Keres—the Anthesteria is over!” The temples reopened, the shrouds were removed, and normal life resumed.

But what if that normal life never returned?

The Shadow of Invasion: Persia and the Threat to Athens

In the early summer of 480 BCE, the Athenian statesman Themistocles urged his fellow citizens to abandon their homes. The Persian Empire, under King Xerxes, was advancing, and Athens stood directly in its path. The ominous ambiguity of the Anthesteria festival took on new meaning—the word Keres (spirits) sounded dangerously close to Kares (Carians), a people long considered barbarians by the Greeks.

Among the most formidable of Persia’s allies was Artemisia, the warrior queen of Halicarnassus. A skilled naval commander, she led a powerful fleet that threatened to descend upon Piraeus, Athens’ port. If the Persians reached Attica unopposed, the distinction between Keres and Kares would vanish—foreign invaders would roam Athens’ streets, and they would not disappear at sunset.

The Great Evacuation: Desperation and Dislocation

Themistocles had fought at Artemisium to buy time for Athens’ evacuation, but the scale of the exodus was heartbreaking. Across the Saronic Gulf, the city of Troezen welcomed Athenian refugees with open arms, offering shelter, food, and education. Yet the sight of families trudging toward the coast, their belongings piled onto carts, filled the remaining citizens with sorrow and rage.

Athenian women, normally secluded and strictly guarded, now moved openly through the streets—a shocking breach of social norms. The democratic reforms of 507 BCE had done little to change their status; if anything, the fear of female influence had only grown. Solon’s laws, which equated public women with prostitutes, had entrenched a culture of seclusion. Now, as wives and mothers joined the chaotic flight, their husbands watched in dismay, powerless to stop them.

When Themistocles returned from Artemisium, he found Athens still unprepared. The Spartans, despite their promises, were fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth, abandoning Attica to its fate. Even the gods seemed to have turned their backs—the sacred serpent of the Acropolis, a symbol of Athena’s protection, had vanished, and the golden Gorgon necklace from the statue of Athena Polias was missing. Themistocles, furious, ordered searches of wealthy citizens’ belongings, confiscating gold and silver to fund the desperate evacuation.

The Fall of Athens: Fire and Defiance

As the last ships departed, Athens became a ghost town. Dogs howled on the empty beaches, and exiled politicians like Xanthippus watched their homeland recede into the distance. The refugees gathered on Salamis, where the Athenian fleet—180 triremes strong—stood as a final defense. Themistocles, ever the orator, declared that even in exile, he had given his people “the greatest city in Greece.”

But the Persians were coming. Xerxes’ army marched into Attica, burning fields and villages. The Acropolis, Athens’ sacred heart, became the last stronghold. Despite Themistocles’ advice to abandon it, the assembly voted to defend it. A small band of holdouts barricaded themselves inside, trusting in their “wooden walls.”

Their defiance was short-lived. Persian archers rained fire arrows upon the barricades, and elite troops scaled the cliffs at the Acropolis’ undefended rear. The defenders were slaughtered, the temples burned. The great monuments of democracy—including the statues of the tyrannicides—were torn down and prepared for transport to Susa. By nightfall, the Acropolis was a smoldering ruin, its smoke visible for miles.

The Aftermath: Hope Amid the Ashes

As dawn broke over the charred remains of the Acropolis, a strange miracle occurred. Among the ruins, a surviving olive tree—Athena’s sacred gift to the city—sprouted a new green shoot. For the exiled Athenians watching from Salamis, it was a fragile sign of renewal.

The Battle of Salamis still loomed, and the fate of Greece hung in the balance. But in that moment, as the Persians celebrated their victory and the Greeks mourned their loss, the resilience of Athens—its festivals, its people, its legends—endured. The Anthesteria’s spirits had been driven away once before. Now, the Athenians would have to banish a far greater evil.