While Ancient Greece is remembered for its philosophy and architecture, the ancient Greeks brutally sacrificed their ugliest to maintain the common good, in a custom known as the pharmakos ritual.
One of the darkest aspects of Grecial society was the belief in an underworld populated by demons, ghosts and bogeys that personified people’s fears. Ancient texts show an obsession with murder and death, but it is the pharmakos ritual that is the most disturbing of all.
The ritual took place from the 8th to 5th century BC during times of plague. Each Greek town at the time would choose its ugliest inhabitant – known as pharmakos (“ugly” or deformed). These people would be driven through town where they were either cast out of the city or thrown of a cliff.
In some places this ritual was so popular that it became annual. In Athens it was celebrated during the yearly Thraglia festival in honor of the Delian Apollo and Artemis.
