lready referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison
does not seem to have realized that in her book[427] she has collected
evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the
interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 _et seq._), she
has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in
popular parlance '[Greek: halade mystai],' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p.
152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's
birth from the sea.

The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates
for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428] a young pig".

"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one
occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important
was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C.
350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as
the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).

"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenaeus, two vessels
called _plemochoae_ are emptied, one towards the East and the other
towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic formulary
was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly
say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the _plemochoae_ with
a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries,
looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth
they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).

In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in
a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the
river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in
the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was
born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence
these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean,
at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The
candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a
rite of purification,[429] as is commonly claimed, but because the
sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the co