If the Skirophoria must, all said, remain conjectural, the gist of the Stenia is clear and was understood by the ancients themselves. Photius remarks on _Stenia_—‘a festival at Athens in which the Anodos of Demeter is held to take place. At this festival, according to Euboulos, the women abuse each other by night.’ Hesychius[348] explains in like fashion and adds: στηνιῶσαι, ‘to use bad language,’ ‘to abuse.’ According to him they not only abused each other but ‘made scurrilous jests.’ Such abuse, we know from Aristophanes[349], was a regular element of the licence of the Thesmophoria. The _Gephyrismoi_, the jokes at the bridge, of the Eleusinian Mysteries, will occur to every one: similar in content is the stone-throwing, the Lithobolia of Damia and Auxesia. It is interesting to note that in the primitive festivals of the Romans, the same scurrility contests appear. At the ancient feast of the _Nonae Capratinae_, Plutarch[350] tells us, ‘the women are feasted in the fields in booths made of fig-tree branches, and the servant-maids run about and play; afterwards they come to blows and throw stones at one another.’ The servant-maids represent here as elsewhere a primitive subject population; they live during the festival in booths as the women did at the Thesmophoria. How precisely this fight and this scurrility serve the end proposed, the promotion of fertility, is not wholly clear, but the throwing of stones, the beating and fighting, all look like the expulsion of evil influences. The scurrilous and sometimes to our modern thinking unseemly gestures savour of sympathetic magic, an intent that comes out clearly in the festival of the Haloa, the discussion of which must be reserved to the end. * * * * * We come next to the all-absorbing question, What is the derivation, the real root-meaning of the term _Thesmophoria_ and the title _Thesmophoros_? The orthodox explanation of the Thesmophoria is that it was the festival of Demeter Thesmophoros, the law-carrier or law-giver. With Demeter, it is said, came in agriculture, settled life, marriage and the beginnings of civilized law. This is the view held by the scholiast on Theocritus[351]. In commenting on various sacred plants, which promoted chastity, he adds, ‘It was a law among the Athenians that they should celebrate the Thesmophoria yearly, and the Thesmophoria is this: women who are virgins and have lived a holy life, on the day of the feast, place certain customary and holy books on their heads, and as though to perform a liturgy they go to Eleusis.’