It was not the habit of those days to trouble about ‘verb-stems’ and ‘nouns of the agent in τηρ,’ but it is surprising to find that the dubious guess hazarded by Istros should have passed so long unchallenged by modern science, the more so as flowers have but a general and accidental connection with the ritual of the feast. Are scholars really content with an etymology that makes of the Anthesteria the festival of those who ‘did the flowers’? In a recent paper in the _Hellenic Journal_[109] Dr A. W. Verrall has faced the difficulty and offered a new solution. The names of festivals, he points out, are no exception to the rule that nouns in τηριο are normally formed from verb-stems through the ‘noun of the agent’ in τηρ, and take their sense from the action described by the verb, as σωτήριος, λυτήριος, βουλευτήριον. In like fashion the names of festivals ending in τηρια describe the action in which the ceremony consisted, or with which it was chiefly connected. Thus ἀνακλητήρια is a feast or ceremony of ἀνάκλησις, ἀνακαλυπτήρια of ἀνακάλυψις and so on. _Prima facie_ then a derivation of _Anthesteria_, should start from the assumption that the stem is verbal. “But we need not assume that the verbal stem is ἀνθεσ-. Perhaps ἀνθεσ- itself needs analysis; and for the first syllable there is an obviously possible origin in the preposition ἀν- (ἀνά), of which so many examples (e.g. ἄνθεμα = ἀνάθεμα) are preserved in the poets. The verb-stem will then be θεσ-, which is in fact a verb-stem and has more than one meaning. The meaning which would perhaps in any case have suggested itself first, and which now seems especially attractive, is that which appears in the archaic verb θέσασθαι or θέσσασθαι _to pray_ or _pray for_[110], and in the adjectives πολύθεστος and ἀπόθεστος. Prayers and invocations addressed to the dead were a regular part of the proceedings by which they were brought back to the world of the living. The compound ἀναθέσσασθαι would, after the analogy of ἀνακαλεῖν and the like, bear the sense _to raise by prayer_ or _to recall by prayer_, literally ‘to pray up’ or ‘pray back.’ And ἀνθεστήρια, derived from ἀναθέσσασθαι, would be the _feast of revocation_, the name, as usual, signifying the action in which the ceremony consisted and which was the object of it[111].” In connection with this new and illuminating etymology, it is interesting to note that even in their misguided derivation from ἄνθος the ancients themselves lay stress not so much on the flowers as on the rising up[112], the ἀνθεῖν ἐκ τῆς γῆς. Under the word Ἄνθεια the _Etymologicon Magnum_ says ‘a title of Hera when she sends up (ἀνίησι) fruits,’ where there seems a haunting of the true meaning though none of the _form_[113].