the simplest of all methods of expelling such malign influences of any kind is to abuse them with the most violent language. No distinction is drawn between this and the custom of abusing, and even beating, the persons or things which are to be rid of them, as a carpet is beaten for no fault of its own, but to get the dust out of it.... There can be no doubt that the element of invective and personal satire which distinguishes the Old Comedy is directly descended from the magical abuse of the phallic procession, just as its obscenity is due to the sexual magic; and it is likely that this ritual justification was well known to an audience familiar with the phallic ceremony itself [_ibid._, pp. 49 f.]. It is possible to cite many examples of ritualistic scurrility among the Greeks, such as that indulged in by the Eleusinian procession as it approached “the bridge,” that of the riders upon the carts on the Day of Pots (χόες) at the Anthesteria, that at the Stenia festival, and many others. Sometimes these involved physical violence as well as mere abuse, and this element (or the threat of it) frequently recurs in Old Comedy. Perhaps the most interesting parallel is afforded by Herodotus v. 82 f. In the sixth century B.C., in order to avert a famine, the Epidaurians set up wooden statues of Damia and Auxesia, goddesses of fertility.[90] Somewhat later, the Aeginetans stole these images and set them up in their own country; “they used to appease them with sacrifices and female satiric choruses, appointing ten men to furnish the choruses for each goddess; the choruses abused no man but only the women of the country; the Epidaurians also had the same rites.”