‘The same rites are called Arretophoria (carrying of things unnamed) and are performed with the same intent concerning the growth of crops and of human offspring. In the case of the Arretophoria, too, sacred things that may not be named and that are made of cereal paste, are carried about, i.e. images of snakes and of the forms of men[310]. They employ also fir-cones on account of the fertility of the tree, and into the sanctuaries called _megara_ these are cast and also, as we have already said, swine—the swine, too, on account of their prolific character—in token of the growth of fruits and human beings, as a thank-offering to Demeter, inasmuch as she, by providing the grain called by her name, civilized the human race. The interpretation then of the festival given above is mythological, but the one we give now is physical. The name Thesmophoria is given because Demeter bears the title Thesmophoros, since she laid down a law or Thesmos in accordance with which it was incumbent on men to obtain and provide by labour their nurture.’ The main outline of the ritual, in spite of certain obscurities in the scholiast’s account, is clear. At some time not specified, but during the Thesmophoria, women, carefully purified for the purpose, let down pigs into clefts or chasms called μέγαρα or chambers. At some other time not precisely specified they descended into the _megara_, brought up the rotten flesh and placed it on certain altars, whence it was taken and mixed with seed to serve as a fertility charm. As the first day of the festival was called both _Kathodos_ and _Anodos_ it seems likely that the women went down and came up the same day, but as the flesh of the pigs was rotten some time must have elapsed. It is therefore conjectured that the flesh was left to rot for a whole year, and that the women on the first day took down the new pigs and brought up last year’s pigs. How long the pigs were left to rot does not affect the general content of the festival. It is of more importance to note that the flesh seems to have been regarded as in some sort the due of the powers of the earth as represented by the guardian snakes. The flesh was wanted by men as a fertility charm, but the snakes it was thought might demand part of it; they were scared away, but to compensate for what they did not get, surrogates made of cereal paste had to be taken down. These paste surrogates were in the form of things specially fertile. It is not quite clear whether the pine-cones etc. or only the pigs were let down at the Thesmophoria as well as the Arrephoria, but as the scholiast is contending for the close analogy of both festivals this seems probable. It does not indeed much matter what the exact form of the _sacra_ was: all were fertility charms.