Pharmakos

A Pharmakós (Greek: φαρμακός) in Ancient Greek religion was the ritualistic sacrifice or exile by the sorcerers of a human scapegoat or victim. The victims themselves were referred to as pharmakoi and the sorcerer was referred to as a pharmakon. A slave, a cripple or a criminal was chosen by the pharmakon or sorcerer and expelled from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis, after being given pharmakeus or drugs by the pharmakon or sorcerer who was a practitioner of pharmakeia or pharmaceutics. It was believed that this would bring about purification. On the first day of the Thargelia, a festival of Apollo at Athens, two men, the Pharmakoi, were led out as if to be sacrificed as an expiation. Some scholia state that pharmakoi were actually sacrificed (thrown from a cliff or burned), but many modern scholars reject this, arguing that the earliest source for the pharmakos (the iambic satirist Hipponax) shows the pharmakos being beaten and stoned, but not executed. A more plausible explanation would be that sometimes they were executed and sometimes they weren't depending on the attitude of the victim. For instance a deliberate unrepentant murderer would most likely be put to death.