Thucydides goes on to note some particulars of the ritual of the Diasia; the ceremonies took place outside the citadel, sacrifices were offered by the whole people collectively, and many of those who sacrificed offered not animal sacrifices but offerings in accordance with local custom. The word ἱερεῖα, the regular ritual term for _animal_ sacrifices, is here opposed to θύματα ἐπιχώρια, local sacrifices. But for the Scholiast the meaning of ‘local sacrifices’ would have remained dubious; he explains, and no doubt rightly, that these customary ‘local sacrifices’ were cakes made in the shape of animals. The principle _in sacris simulata pro veris accipi_ was and is still of wide application, and as there is nothing in it specially characteristic of the Diasia it need not be further exemplified. Two notices of the Diasia in the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes[28] yield nothing. The fact that Strepsiades bought a little cart at the Diasia for his boy or even cooked a sausage for his relations is of no significance. Wherever any sort of religious ceremony goes on, there among primitive peoples a fair will be set up and outlying relations will come in and must be fed, nor does it concern us to decide whether the cart bought by Strepsiades was a real cart or as the Scholiast suggests a cake-cart. Cakes in every conceivable form belong to the common fund of _quod semper quod ubique_. Of capital importance however is the notice of the Scholiast on line 408 where the exact date of the Diasia is given. It was celebrated on the 8th day of the last decade of the month Anthesterion—i.e. about the 14th of March. The Diasia was a Spring festival and therein as will be shown later (p. 52) lies its true significance. From Lucian we learn that by his time the Diasia had fallen somewhat into abeyance; in the _Icaro-Menippos_ Zeus complains that his altars are as cold as the syllogisms of Chrysippos. Worn out old god as he was, men thought it sufficient if they sacrificed every six years at Olympia. ‘Why is it,’ he asks ruefully, ‘that for so many years the Athenians have left out the Diasia?’ It is significant that here again, as in the case of Cylon, the Olympian Zeus has tended to efface from men’s mind the ritual of him who bore the title Meilichios. The Scholiast[29] feels that some explanation of an obsolete festival is desirable, and explains: ‘the Diasia, a festival at Athens, which they keep with a certain element of chilly gloom (στυγνότης), offering sacrifices to Zeus Meilichios.’ This ‘chilly gloom’ arrests attention at once. What has Zeus of the high heaven, of the upper air, to do with ‘chilly gloom,’ with things abhorrent and abominable? Styx is the chill cold water of death, Hades and the Erinyes are ‘chilly ones’ (στυγεροί), the epithet is utterly aloof from Zeus. The Scholiast implies that the ‘chilly gloom’ comes in from the sacrifice to Zeus _Meilichios_. Zeus quâ Zeus gives no clue, it remains to examine the title Meilichios.