Plynteria was a festival of ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 celebrated at Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 every year, on the 22nd of Thargelion

Attic calendar

The Attic calendar is a hellenic calendar that was in use in ancient Attica, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis. This article focuses on the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the classical period that produced some of the most significant works of ancient Greek literature. Because of the...

, in honor of Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

 Polias, with the heroine Aglauros

Aglaulus, daughter of Cecrops

Aglaulus or Agraulos was in Greek mythology the daughter of Cecrops and Aglaulus, daughter of Actaeus. She had two offspring by two different gods, Alcippe and Ceryx...

 (or with the two combined as Athena Aglauros), whose temple stood on the Acropolis

Acropolis

Acropolis means "high city" in Greek, literally city on the extremity and is usually translated into English as Citadel . For purposes of defense, early people naturally chose elevated ground to build a new settlement, frequently a hill with precipitous sides...

. The festival's name came from plynein , a Greek verb meaning "to wash".

Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 states that the festival took place on the 25th, but probably only because it lasted for several days. The day of this festival was at Athens among the apophrades or dies nefasti, that is, impure days on which temples were closed and business was not done. During the festival the temple of Athena was surrounded by a rope to preclude all communication with it. Her statue was stripped of its garments and ornaments so that they might be ritually cleaned, and was in the meanwhile covered over to conceal it from the sight of man. The genos

Genos

Genos was the ancient Greek term for kind; race; family; birth; origin which identified themselves as a unit, referred to by a single name...

of women who performed this service were called praxiergidai . The city was therefore, so to speak, on this day without its protecting divinity, and any undertaking commenced on it was believed to be necessarily unsuccessful. A procession was also held on the day of the Plynteria, in which a quantity of dried figs, called hegetoria , was carried around.

The Plynteria is thought to have originated in Ionia

Ionia

Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...

, where some communities had a month named Plynterion.