On the first day, the 11th of Anthesterion, i.e. the Pithoigia, Plutarch[55] tells us ‘they broached the new wine at Athens. It was an ancient custom,’ he adds, ‘to offer some of it as a libation before they drank it, praying at the same time that the use of the drug (φαρμάκου) might be rendered harmless and beneficial to them.’ This is a clear case of the offering of first-fruits[56]. Among his own people, the Boeotians, Plutarch adds, ‘the day was called the day of the Good Spirit[57], the Agathos Daimon, and to him they made offerings. The month itself was known as Prostaterios.’ The scholiast to Hesiod[58] tells us that the festival was an ancestral one (ἐν τοῖς πατρίοις), and that it was not allowable to hinder either household slaves or hired servants from partaking of the wine. The casks once opened, the revel set in and lasted through the next day (the Choes or Cups) and on through the third (the Chytroi or Pots). The day of the Choes seems to have been the climax, and sometimes gave its name to the whole festival. It is needless to dwell on all the details of what was in intent a three days’ fair. A ‘Pardon’ in the Brittany of to-day affords perhaps the nearest modern analogy. The children have holidays, fairings are bought, friends are feasted, the sophists get their fees, the servants generally are disorganized, and every one down to the small boys, as many a vase-painting tells us, is more or less drunk. The drinking bore of course its ritual aspect; there is a drinking contest presided over by the King Archon, he who first drains his cup gets a cake, each man crowns his cup with a garland and deposits the wreath in keeping of the priestess of the sanctuary of Dionysos in the Marshes. On the day of the _Cups_ takes place the august ceremony of the wedding of the wife of the King Archon to the god Dionysos. On that day alone in all the year the temple of Dionysos is opened[59]; the wedding ceremony itself takes place in the Boukoleion. On the third day, the _Chytroi_ or Pots, there was a dramatic contest known as Χύτρινοι, Pot-contests. During this third day the revel went on; Aristophanes[60] has left us the picture of the drunken mob thronging the streets at the holy Pot-Feast: ‘O brood of the mere and the spring, Gather together and sing From the depths of your throat By the side of the boat Coäx, as we move in a ring. As in Limnae we sang the divine Nyseïan Giver of Wine, When the people in lots With their sanctified Pots Came reeling around my shrine.’ The scholiast on the _Acharnians_[61], a play which gives us a lively picture of the festival, says that the Choes and the Chytroi were celebrated on one day. The different days and acts of the whole Anthesteria were doubtless not sharply divided, and if each day was reckoned from sunrise to sunset confusion would easily arise. * * * * *