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Apharmakós (Greek:φαρμακός, pluralpharmakoi) inAncient Greek religion was the ritualistic sacrifice or exile of a humanscapegoat or victim.

A slave, a disabled person, or a criminal was chosen and expelled from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis. It was believed that this would bring about purification. On the first day of theThargelia, a festival ofApollo at Athens, two men, thepharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacrificed as an expiation.

Somescholia state thatpharmakoi were actually sacrificed (thrown from a cliff or burned), but many modern scholars reject this, arguing that the earliest source for thepharmakos (the iambic satiristHipponax) shows thepharmakoi being beaten and stoned, but not executed. A more plausible explanation would be that sometimes they were executed and sometimes not, depending on the attitude of the victim. For instance, a deliberate unrepentant murderer would most likely be put to death.^{[citation needed]}

InAesop in Delphi (1961), Anton Wiechers discussed the parallels between the legendary biography ofAesop (in which he is unjustly tried and executed by the Delphians) and thepharmakos ritual. For example, Aesop is grotesquely deformed, as was thepharmakos in some traditions; and Aesop was thrown from a cliff, as was the pharmakos in some traditions.

Gregory Nagy, inBest of the Achaeans (1979), compared Aesop'spharmakos death to the "worst" of the Achaeans in theIliad,Thersites. More recently, both Daniel Ogden,The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece (1997) andTodd Compton,Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero (2006) examine poetpharmakoi. Compton surveys important poets who were exiled, executed or suffered unjust trials, either in history, legend or Greek orIndo-European myth.

Walter Burkert andRené Girard have written influential modern interpretations of thepharmakos rite. Burkert shows that humans were sacrificed or expelled after being fed well, and, according to some sources, their ashes were scattered to the ocean. This was a purification ritual, a form of societalcatharsis.^[1] Girard likewise discusses the connection between catharsis, sacrifice, and purification.^[2] Some scholars have connected the practice ofostracism, in which a prominent politician was exiled from Athens after a vote using pottery pieces, with thepharmakos custom. However, the ostracism exile was only for a fixed time, as opposed to the finality of thepharmakos execution or expulsion.

Pharmakos is also used as a vital term in Derrideandeconstruction. In his essay "Plato's Pharmacy",^[3]Jacques Derrida deconstructs several texts byPlato, such asPhaedrus, and reveals the inter-connection between the word chainpharmakeia–pharmakon–pharmakeus and the notably absent wordpharmakos. In doing so, he attacks the boundary between inside and outside, declaring that the outside (pharmakos, never uttered by Plato) is always-already present right behind the inside (pharmakeia–pharmakon–pharmakeus). As a concept, Pharmakos can be said to be related to other Derridian terms such as "Trace".

• Etymology ofpharmacy
• Modes of persuasion, which includeethos,pathos,logos andkairos

• Bremmer, Jan N. (1983)."Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient Greece".Harvard Studies in Classical Philology.87:299–320. Archived fromthe original on 13 January 2010.
• Burkert, Walter (1985).Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Burkert, Walter,Structure and History in Greek Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979, 59-77.
• Calcagnetti, Daniel J., "Neuropharmacology: From Cellular Receptors and Neurotransmitter Synthesis to Neuropathology & Drug Addiction", First Edition, 2006.
• Compton, Todd,"The Pharmakos Ritual: Testimonia."
• Compton, Todd,Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies/Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Derrida, Jacques (1981).Dissemination. Translated by Johnson, Barbara. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Fiore, Robert L.,"Alarcon's El dueno de las estrellas: Hero and Pharmakos",Hispanic Review, Vol. 61, No. 2, Earle Homage Issue (Spring, 1993), pp. 185–199.
• Frazer, James.The Golden Bough. Part VI. The Scapegoat, pp. 252ff.
• Girard, René (1986).The Scapegoat. Translated by Y. Freccero. Baltimore.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Harrison, Jane Ellen,Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1921.
• Harrison, Jane Ellen,Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1908.
• Harrison, Jane Ellen,Themis: a Study of the Social Origin of Greek Religion, 1921.
• Hirayama, Koji,Stoning in the Pharmakos Ritual,Journal of Classical Studies, XLIX(2001), Classical Society of Japan,Kyoto University.
• Hughes, Dennis,Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece, London 1991, pp. 139–165.
• Litwa, M David, 'ThePharmakos,' chapter 11 inHow the Gospels became history: Jesus and Mediterranean myths, Synkrisis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019; pp.156-68.
• Nagy, Gregory.The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 280–90 in print edition.
• Nilsson, Martin P.,Greek Popular Religion, 1940. See the discussion of the Thargelia in the chapter “Rural Customs and Festivals.”
• Ogden, Daniel,The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece London 1997, pp. 15–46.
• Parker, Robert,Miasma, Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 24–26, 257-280.
• Rinella, Michael A.,Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010, 73-74.
• Whibley, Leonard, MA,A Companion to Greek Studies. Cambridge University Press.
• Wiechers, A.Aesop in Delphi. Meisenheim am Glan 1961.

• Injustice
• Ancient Greek religion

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