to throw pigs, cakes of dough, and branches of pine-trees into “the chasms of Demeter and Proserpine,” which appear to have been sacred caverns or vaults.(168) In these caverns or vaults there were said to be serpents, which guarded the caverns and consumed most of the flesh of the pigs and dough-cakes which were thrown in. Afterwards—apparently at the next annual festival(169)—the decayed remains of the pigs, the cakes, and the pine-branches were fetched by women called “drawers,” who, after observing rules of ceremonial purity for three days, descended into the caverns, and, frightening away the serpents by clapping their hands, brought up the remains and placed them on the altar. Whoever got a piece of the decayed flesh and cakes, and sowed it with the seed-corn in his field, was believed to be sure of a good crop. To explain this rude and ancient rite the following legend was told. At the moment that Pluto carried off Proserpine, a swineherd called Eubuleus was herding his swine on the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which Pluto vanished with Proserpine. Accordingly at the Thesmophoria pigs were annually thrown into caverns in order to commemorate the disappearance of the swine of Eubuleus. It follows from this that the casting of the pigs into the vaults at the Thesmophoria formed part of the dramatic representation of Proserpine’s descent into the lower world; and as no image of Proserpine appears to have been thrown in, it follows that the descent of the pigs must have been, not an accompaniment of her descent, but the descent itself; in short, the pigs were Proserpine. Afterwards when Proserpine or Demeter (for the two are equivalent) became anthropomorphic, a reason had to be found for the custom of throwing pigs into caverns at her festival; and this was done by saying that when Proserpine was carried off, there happened to be some swine browsing near, which were swallowed up along with her. The story is obviously a forced and awkward attempt to bridge over the gulf between the old conception of the corn-spirit as a pig and the new conception of her as an anthropomorphic goddess. A trace of the older conception survived in the legend that when Demeter was looking for the lost Proserpine, the footprints of the latter were obliterated by the footprints of a pig;(170) originally, no doubt, the footprints of the pig were the footprints of Proserpine and of Demeter herself. A consciousness of the intimate connection of the pig with the corn lurks in the tradition that the swineherd Eubuleus was a brother of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter first imparted the secret of the corn. Indeed, according to one version of the story, Eubuleus himself received, jointly with his brother Triptolemus, the gift of the corn from Demeter as a reward for revealing to her the fate of Proserpine.(171) Further, it is to be noted that at the Thesmophoria the women appear to have eaten swine’s flesh.(172) The meal,