Plutarch[101], in discussing the nature of the sacred objects committed to the care of the Vestal Virgins, makes the following notable statement: ‘Those who pretend to have most special knowledge about them (i.e. the Vestal Virgins) assert that there are set there two jars (πίθοι) of no great size, of which the one is open and empty, the other full and sealed up, and neither of them may be seen except by these all-holy virgins. But others think that this is false, and that the idea arose from the fact that the maidens then placed most of their sacred things in two jars, and hid them underground below the temple of Quirinus, and that the place even now is called from that by the title _Pithisci_ (Doliola).’ We have two other notices of these Doliola. Varro[102] says: ‘The place which is called Doliola is at the Cloaca Maxuma, where people are not allowed to spit. It is so called from the jars beneath the earth. Two accounts are given of these jars: some say they contain the bones of dead bodies, others that after the death of Numa Pompilius certain sacred objects (religiosa quaedam) were buried there.’ Festus[103] gives substantially the same account, but he says that the sacred objects were buried there when the Gauls invaded the city. Of jars containing ‘sacra’ we have in Greece no knowledge, but it is significant to find that Zeus, who was the heir to so much antique ritual, had on his threshold in Olympus two jars, one containing good the other evil[104]: ‘Jars twain upon Zeus’ threshold ever stood; One holds his gifts of evil, one of good.’ With some such notion as that of the Pithoigia must have been connected the ceremony of the opening of the _mundus_ or round pit on the Palatine. Festus[105] tells us that on three days in the year, August 24, October 5, November 6, the _lapis manalis_ that covered it was removed. Varro, quoted by Macrobius[106], adds: ‘when the _mundus_ is open, the gate of the doleful underworld gods is open.’ * * * * * It has been shown that the ritual of each of the several days points determinedly ghost-wards. The names in each case _admit_ at least of chthonic interpretation. It remains to examine the collective name _Anthesteria_. The ancients sought and found what was to them a satisfactory etymology. Istros, writing in the third century B.C. and quoted by Harpocration, says that Anthesterion is the blossoming month because then ‘the most of the things that spring from the earth blossom forth[107].’ The _Etymologicon Magnum_[108] offers an easy-going alternative: feast and month bear their names either because the earth then began to blossom, or because they offered flowers at the festival.