The statement of Suidas in itself makes the significance of the words abundantly clear, but close parallels are not wanting in the ritual of other races. The Lemuria at Rome is a case in point. According to Ovid[65] each father of a family as the festival came round had to lay the ghosts of his house after a curious and complex fashion. When midnight was come and all was still, he arose and standing with bare feet he made a special sign with his fingers and thumb to keep off any ghost. Thrice he washes his hands in spring water, then he turns round and takes black beans into his mouth; with face averted he spits them away, and as he spits them says, ‘These I send forth, with these beans I redeem myself and mine.’ Nine times he speaks, and looks not back. The ghost, they believe, picks them up and follows behind if no one looks. Again he touches the water and strikes the brass of Temesa and begs the ghost to leave his house. When nine times he has said, ‘Shades of my fathers, depart’ (Manes exite paterni!), he looks back and holds that the rite has been duly done. We cannot impute to the Anthesteria all the crude minutiae of the Lemuria, but the content is clearly the same—the expulsion of ancestral ghosts. The Lemuria took place not in the spring but in the early summer, May—a time at which ceremonies of purification were much needed. A second striking parallel is recorded by Mr Tylor[66]. He says of a like Sclavonic custom, ‘when the meal was over the priest rose from the table and hunted out the souls of the dead like fleas with these words: “Ye have eaten and drunk, souls, now go, now go”.’ Dr Oldenberg[67] calls attention to another analogy. In sacrifices in India to the dead the souls of ancestors are first invoked, then bidden to depart, and even invited to return again after the prescribed lapse of a month. The formula used at the close of the Anthesteria is in itself ample proof that the Anthesteria was a festival of All Souls; here at last we know for certain what was dimly shadowed in the Diasia, that some portion at least of the ritual of the month Anthesterion was addressed to the powers of the underworld, and that these powers were primarily the ghosts of the dead. The evidence is not however confined to an isolated proverbial formulary. The remaining ritual of the Chytroi confirms it. Before they were bidden to depart the ghosts were feasted and after significant fashion.