If we suppose that the Cups (χόες) were originally Libations (χοαί), the somewhat strained punctilio of the host becomes at least intelligible. Orestes is polluted by the guilt (ἄγος) of his mother’s blood, he finds the people in the Limnae[89], close to the Areopagos, celebrating the Χοαί, the libations to the dead; till he is purified from kindred blood he cannot join: all is simple and clear. If the Choes were in intent χοαί, the Cups Libations, the ceremony has an interesting parallel in a rite performed at the Eleusinian mysteries. Athenaeus[90], in discussing various shapes of cups says: ‘The plemochoë is an earthen vessel shaped like a top that stands fairly steady; some call it, Pamphilos tells us, the cotyliscus. And they use it at Eleusis on the last day of the mysteries, which takes its name Plemochoai from the cup. On this day they fill two plemochoae and set them up, the one towards the East, the other towards the West, and pronounce over them a magic formula. The author of the _Peirithous_ mentions them, whether he be Ktesias the Tyrant or Euripides, as follows: “That these plemochoae down the Chthonian chasm With words well-omened we may pour.”’ It is at least significant that a compound of the word χοή should both give its name to a festival day and to a vessel used in chthonic ritual. The Chytroi and Choes then bear unmistakeably a character of gloom, and in their primary content are festivals of ghosts. But what of the Pithoigia? Surely this day is all revel and jollity, all for Dionysos? Had we been dependent on literature alone, such would have been our inevitable conclusion. In Plutarch’s account of the Pithoigia (p. 33), the earliest and fullest we possess, there is no hint of any worship other than that of the wine-god, no hint of possible gloom. Eustathius[91] indeed tells of a Pithoigia or Jar-opening which was ‘not of a festal character, but in every respect unlucky,’ but this is the Pithoigia, the Jar-opening, of Pandora. Here we have a hint that a Pithoigia need not be an opening of wine-jars; there are other jars, other openings, but save for the existence of one small fragile monument the significance of the hint would have escaped us. [Illustration: FIG. 7.]