In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the athletic competition of the Ballētus is overtly described as an act of compensation, recurring at the right season into all eternity, and this competition is understood to be an eternal compensation for a primal pollution caused by human error. That pollution was the unintended death of an infant hero named Dēmophōn. The queen of Eleusis, mother of this infant hero, had unintentionally ruined the plan of the goddess Demeter to make Dēmophōn exempt from death. That moment happens when the queen interrupts Demeter in the sacred act of dipping the infant Dēmophōn into the fire of the household fireplace in order to galvanize this infant into a state of immortality (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 239-250). Here I quote the passage that tells about the immediate aftermath, where the goddess angrily condemns the error of the queen and announces that the infant hero Dēmophōn will now be subject to death, like all other mortals. As we are about to see, however, the dooming of the infant to death comes with a compensation:
Hour 8 Text C
|259 I [= Demeter] swear by the implacable water of the Styx, the witness of oaths that gods make, as I say this: |260 immortal and ageless for all days |261 would I have made your dear [philos] little boy, and I would have given him honor [tīmē] that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos]. |262 But now there is no way for him to avoid death and doom. |263 Still, he will have an honor [tīmē] that is unwilting [a-phthi-tos], for all time, because on my knees |264 he had once sat and slept in my arms. |265 At the right season [hōrā], every year, |266 the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other. |267 They will do so for all days to come.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 259-267
I highlight here at verse 265 the noun hōrā (plural hōrai), ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’. As we see from the context that I just quoted here in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this noun hōrā marks the seasonal recurrence of rituals honoring cult heroes.