It is practically certain that the ceremonies of the burying and resurrection of the pigs took place on the first day of the Thesmophoria called variously the _Kathodos_ and the _Anodos_. It is further probable from the name _Kalligeneia_, Fairborn, that on the third day took place the strewing of the rotten flesh on the fields. The second, intervening day, also called μέση, the middle day, was a solemn fast, _Nesteia_; probably on this day the magical _sacra_ lay upon the altars where the women placed them. The strictness of this fast made it proverbial. On this day prisoners were released, the law courts were closed, the Boule could not meet[320]. Athenaeus mentions the fast when he is discussing different kinds of fish. One of the Cynics comes in and says: ‘My friends too are keeping a fast as if this were the middle day of the Thesmophoria since we are feasting like _cestreis_’; the _cestreus_ being non-carnivorous. [Illustration: FIG. 12.] The women fasted sitting on the ground, and hence arose the aetiological myth that Demeter herself, the desolate mother, fasted sitting on the ‘Smileless Stone.’ Apollodorus[321], in recounting the sorrows of Demeter, says: ‘and first she sat down on the stone that is called after her “Smileless” by the side of the “Well of Fair Dances.”’ The ‘Well of Fair Dances’ has come to light at Eleusis, and there, too, was found a curious monument[322] which shows how the Eleusinians made the goddess in their own image. In fig. 12 we have a votive relief of the usual type, a procession of worshippers bearing offerings to a seated goddess. But the goddess is not seated goddess-fashion on a throne; she is the Earth mother, and she crouches as the fasting women crouched on her own earth.