The scholiast on Aristophanes[68] commenting on the words τοῖς ἱεροῖσι Χύτροισι, ‘at the holy Pot-feast,’ explains the ceremonies as follows: ‘The Chytroi is a feast among the Athenians; the cause on account of which it is celebrated is explained by Theopompos who writes thus: ... “They have the custom of sacrificing at this feast, not to any of the Olympian gods at all, but to Hermes Chthonios”; and again in explaining the word χύτρα, pot: “And of the pot which all the citizens cook none of the priests tastes, they do this on the (13th) day”; and again: “Those present appease Hermes on account of the dead”.’ The scholiast on another passage in Aristophanes[69] says substantially the same, but adds, again on the authority of Theopompos, that the practice of cooking the dish of seeds was observed by those who were saved from the deluge on behalf of those who perished. The deluge is of course introduced from a desire to get mythological precedent; the all-important points are that the χύτρα, the dish of grain and seeds, was offered to none of the Olympians, not even to Dionysos in whose honour the festival was ostensibly celebrated, but only to Hermes Chthonios, Hermes of the Underworld, and that of this sacrifice _no man tasted_. It was no sacrifice of communion, but like the holocaust made over utterly to dread chthonic powers, and behind this notion of sacrifice to the underworld deities lay the still earlier notion that it was dead men’s food, a supper for the souls. Before we leave the χύτρα it is necessary to examine more precisely the name of the day, Chytroi. August Mommsen[70] has emphasized the fact, too much neglected, that the name of the festival is masculine, οἱ χύτροι not αἱ χύτραι. The feminine form χύτραι means pots artificially made; the masculine form χύτροι, which occurs far less frequently, means in ordinary parlance natural pots, i.e. holes in the ground. Pausanias[71] speaks of a certain natural bath at Thermopylae which the country people called ‘the Chytroi of the women’; and Herodotus[72] describes it in the same terms. Theophrastos[73] in his _History of Plants_ speaks of a certain plant as growing in a place between the Kephisos and the Melas, ‘the place being called Pelekania, i.e. certain hollows in the marsh, the so-called Pot-holes.’ Hesychius[74], interpreting οἱ χύτρινοι, says they are ‘the hollow places of the earth through which springs come up.’ The word κολυμβήθρα itself, in classical Greek a natural pool, became in mediaeval Greek a font, and it may be noted that the natural chasms that occur in western Yorkshire still locally bear the name of ‘Pots.’