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The festival of the Skira () or Skirophoria () in the Attic calendar, closely associated with the Thesmophoria, marked the dissolution of the old year in May/June.The festival is analysed by Walter Burkert, in Homo Necans (1972, tr. 1983:143-49), with bibliography p 143, note 33.
At Skiron there was a sanctuary dedicated to Demeter/Persephone and one to Athena.
As a festival of dissolution, the Skira was a festival proverbial for license, in which men played dice games, but a time also of daytime fasting, and of the inversion of the social order, for the bonds of marriage were suspended, as women banded together and left the quarters where they were ordinarily confined, to eat garlic together "according to ancestral custom", Inscriptiones Graeca, noted by Burkert 1983: 145, note 41; see also Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903, 3rd ed. 1922:134f). and to sacrifice and feast together, at the expense of the men. The Skira is the setting for Aristophanes' comedy Ecclesiazusae (393 BCE), in which the women seize the opportunity afforded by the festival, to hatch their plot to overthrow Patriarchy.
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