The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

Chapter II. Demeter And Persephone. 75offerings were made immediately after the exhortation. Nordoes any ancient authority support the view of a modern scholarthat the offering of the first-fruits, or a portion of them, tookplace at the Festival before Ploughing (Proerosia), 200 though thatfestival would no doubt be an eminently appropriate occasion forpropitiating with such offerings the goddess on whose bountythe next year's crop was believed to depend.On the other hand, we are positively told that the first-fruits The Festival ofthe Threshing-floorwere carried to Eleusis to be used at the Festival of the Threshingfloor(Haloa). 201 But the statement, cursorily reported by writers(Haloa) at Eleusis.of no very high authority, cannot be implicitly relied upon; andeven if it could, we should hardly be justified in inferring fromit that all the first-fruits of the corn were offered to Demeter andPersephone at this festival. Be that as it may, the Festival of the [061]Threshing-floor was intimately connected with the worship bothof Demeter and of Dionysus, and accordingly it deserves ourattention. It is said to have been sacred to both these deities; 202and while the name seems to connect it rather with the CornGoddess than with the Wine God, we are yet informed that itwas held by the Athenians on the occasion of the pruning of thevines and the tasting of the stored-up wine. 203 The festival isκελεύοντας δὲ ἀπάρχεσθαι ἐὰν βούλωνται κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείανἐγ ∆ελφῶν). The Athenians could not command free and independent statesto make such offerings, still less could they prescribe the exact date when theofferings were to be made. All that they could and did do was, taking advantageof the great assembly of Greeks from all quarters at the mysteries, to inviteor exhort, by the mouth of the great priestly functionaries, the foreigners tocontribute.200 August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp.192 sqq.201 Eustathius on Homer, Iliad, ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca,i. 384 sq., s.v. Ἁλῶα. Compare O. Rubensohn, Die Mysterienheiligtümer inEleusis und Samothrake (Berlin, 1892), p. 116.202 Eustathius on Homer, Iliad, ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca,i. 384 sq., s.v. Ἁλῶα.203 Scholia in Lucianum, ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 279 sq. (scholium