e seen, that the god sloughs off his
animal form and becomes purely anthropomorphic; and that then the
animal which at first had been slain in the character of the god,
comes to be viewed as a victim offered to the god on the ground of its
hostility to the deity; in short, that the god is sacrificed to himself
on the ground that he is his own enemy. This happened to Dionysus and
it may have happened to Demeter also. And in fact the rites of one of
her festivals, the Thesmophoria, bear out the view that originally the
pig was an embodiment of the corn-goddess herself, either Demeter or
her daughter and double Proserpine. The Thesmophoria was an autumn
festival celebrated by women alone in October, and appears to have
represented with mourning rites the descent of Proserpine (or Demeter)
into the lower world, and with joy her return from the dead. Hence the
name Descent or Ascent variously applied to the first, and the name
_Kalligeneia_ (fair-born) applied to the third day of the festival. Now
from an old scholium on Lucian we learn some details about the mode
of celebrating the Thesmophoria, which shed important light on the
part of the festival called the Descent or the Ascent. The scholiast
tells us that it was customary at the Thesmophoria 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.

"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--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 when Pluto carried off Proserpine, a swineherd
called Eubuleus chanced to be 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 to commemorate the disappea