It is curious that, though most modern writers from Crusius onwards have recognised that the Chytroi was a _dies nefastus_ and in the main a festival of ghosts, this day has been separated off from the rest of the Anthesteria, and the two previous days have been regarded as purely drinking festivals:—the Pithoigia the opening of the wine-cask, the Choes the drinking of the wine-cups. And yet for the second day, the Choes, literary testimony is explicit. Spite of the drinking contest, the flower-wreathed cups and the wedding of Dionysos, all joyful elements of the service of the wine-god, the Choes was a _dies nefastus_, an unlucky day, a day to be observed with apotropaic precautions. Photius[82], in explaining the words μιαρὰ ἡμέρα, ‘day of pollution,’ says such a day occurred ‘in the Choes in the month of Anthesterion, in which (i.e. during the Choes) they believed that the spirits of the dead rose up again. From early morning they used to chew buckthorn and anointed their doors with pitch.’ Buckthorn, known to modern botanists as _Rhamnus catharticus_, is a plant of purgative properties. The ancient Athenian, like the modern savage, believed that such plants have the power of keeping off evil spirits, or rather perhaps of ejecting them when already in possession. Chewing a substance was naturally a thorough and efficient way of assimilating its virtues. The priestess of Apollo chewed the laurel leaf. It seems possible that she may have primarily had to do this rather as a means of ejecting the bad spirits than to obtain inspiration from the good. Fasting is a substantial safe-guard, but purgation more drastically effective. The prophylactic properties of _rhamnus_, buckthorn, were well known to the ancients. Dioscorides[83] in his _Materia Medica_ writes, ‘it is said that branches of this plant attached to doors or hung up outside repel the evil arts of magicians.’ Possibly, in addition to the chewing of buckthorn, branches of it were fastened to doors at the festival of the Choes, and served the same purpose as the pitch. Pitch, Photius tells us in commenting on _rhamnus_, was on account of its special purity used also to drive away sprites at the birth of a child—always a perilous moment[84]. It is not easy to imagine an enlightened citizen of the Athens of the fifth century B.C., an Aeschylus, a Pericles, chewing buckthorn from early dawn to keep off the ghosts of his ancestors, but custom in such matters has an iron hand. If the masters of the house shirked the chewing of buckthorn, the servants would see to it that the doors were at least anointed with pitch; it is best to be on the safe side in these matters, and there is the public opinion of conservative neighbours to be considered. Be this as it may, it is quite clear that the day of the _Choes_ was a day of ghosts like the day of the _Chytroi_.