184 For example, Theophrastus notes that squills flowered thrice a year, and that each flowering marked the time for one of the three ploughings. See Theophrastus, _Historia Plantarum_, vii. 13. 6. 185 Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 383 _sqq._ The poet indeed refers (_vv._ 765 _sqq._) to days of the month as proper times for engaging in certain tasks; but such references are always simply to days of the lunar month and apply equally to every month; they are never to days as dates in the solar year. M41 Offerings of the first-fruits of the barley and wheat to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis. Isocrates on the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis. 186 See below, p. 72. 187 Dionysius Halicarnasensis, _Antiquit. Rom._ i. 12. 2. 188 Xenophon, _Historia Graeca_, vi. 3. 6. 189 Isocrates, _Panegyric_, 6 _sq._ M42 Athenian decree concerning the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis. 190 Dittenberger, _Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum_,2 No. 20 (vol. i. pp. 33 _sqq._); E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, _An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy_, Part ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22 _sqq._ 191 Aristides, _Panathen._ and _Eleusin._, vol. i. pp. 167 _sq._, 417 ed. G. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1829). M43 Even after foreign states ceased to send first-fruits of the corn to Eleusis, they continued to acknowledge the benefit which the Athenians had conferred on mankind by diffusing among them Demeter’s gift of the corn. Testimony of the Sicilian historian Diodorus. Testimony of Cicero and Himerius. 192 Diodorus Siculus, v. 2 and 4; Cicero, _In C. Verrem_, act. ii. bk. iv. chapters 48 _sq._ Both writers mention that the whole of Sicily was deemed sacred to Demeter and Persephone, and that corn was said to have grown in the island before it appeared anywhere else. In support of the latter claim Diodorus Siculus (v. 2. 4) asserts that wheat grew wild in many parts of Sicily. 193 Diodorus Siculus, v. 4.