Our fullest details of the Haloa, as of the Thesmophoria, come to us from the newly discovered scholia on Lucian[378]. From the scholiast’s account it is clear that by his day the festival was regarded as connected with Dionysos as much as, or possibly more than, with Demeter. He definitely states that it was instituted in memory of the death of Ikarios after his introduction of the vine into Attica. The women he says celebrated it alone, in order that they might have perfect freedom of speech. The sacred symbols of both sexes were handled, the priestesses secretly whispered into the ears of the women present words that might not be uttered aloud, and the women themselves uttered all manner of what seemed to him unseemly quips and jests. The _sacra_ handled are, it is clear, the same as those of the Thesmophoria: that their use and exhibition were carefully guarded is also clear from the exclusion of the other sex. The climax of the festival, it appears, was a great banquet. ‘Much wine was set out and the tables were full of all the foods that are yielded by land and sea, save only those that are prohibited in the mysteries, I mean the pomegranate and the apple and domestic fowls, and eggs and red sea-mullet and black-tail and crayfish and shark. The archons prepare the tables and leave the women inside and themselves withdraw and remain outside, making a public statement to the visitors present that the “gentle foods” were discovered by them (i.e. the people of Eleusis) and by them shared with the rest of mankind. And there are upon the tables cakes shaped like the symbols of sex. And the name Haloa is given to the feast on account of the fruit of Dionysos—for the growths of the vine are called _Aloai_.’ The materials of the women’s feast are interesting. The diet prescribed is of cereals and of fish and possibly fowl, but clearly not of flesh. As such it is characteristic of the old Pelasgian population before the coming of the flesh-eating Achaeans. Moreover—a second point of interest—it is hedged in with all manner of primitive taboos. The precise _reason_ of the taboo on pomegranates, red mullet and the like, is lost beyond recall, but some of the particular taboos are important because they are strictly paralleled in the Eleusinian mysteries. That the pomegranate was ‘taboo’ at the Eleusinian mysteries is clear from the aetiological myth in the Homeric hymn to Demeter[379]. Hades consents to let Persephone return to the upper air. ‘So spake he, and Persephone the prudent up did rise Glad in her heart and swift to go. But he in crafty wise Looked round and gave her stealthily a sweet pomegranate seed To eat, that not for all her days with Her of sable-weed, Demeter, should she tarry.’ The pomegranate was dead men’s food, and once tasted drew Persephone back to the shades. Demeter admits it; she says[380] to Persephone: