have a more or less marked sexual significance.” We also know that the festival “is said to have comprised Mysteries of Demeter, Kore, and Dionysus.” Another source singled out these women's festivals as “containing the germ of ‘Mysteries,’” referencing here the Eleusinian Mysteries—annual initiation ceremonies devoted to the cult of Demeter and Persephone. Rituals As Dionysus, whose festivals are held in wintertime, necessarily shifted the date of Haloa to late December/early January, so too did he shift festival rituals towards the celebration of grapes and wine. Rituals were often conducted by women during the “pruning of the vines and the tasting of the wine” as it is around this time of year that the soil around the vineyards are cut and hoed, and the first fermentation cycle completed. Some texts state that this element of the festival was instituted after the death of the shepherd Icarius (or Ikarios), after he introduced the vine into Attica. The myth has it that Dionysus presented Icarius with the gift of wine as thanks for his hospitality. However, when Icarius shared this gift with his shepherd friends, they mistook the signs of drunkenness as signs of poison, and killed Icarius in retaliation. According to Lucian, Dionysus punished the shepherds by taking the form of a maiden, thus “maddening with sexual desire.” Unfortunately, when the maiden suddenly disappeared, the shepherds’ erections remained until an oracle told them that they must placate the gods by dedicating clay models of genitals. This dedication thus became a custom of the festival. However, Haloa was still a festival to Demeter, and the name of the festival itself points to the harvest activity of threshing. The threshing floor therefore still served as the center of harvest celebration and activity. Eustathius states that “there is celebrated, according to Pausanias, a feast of Demeter and Dionysus called the Haloa” and explains that, during this festival, first-fruits were carried from Athens to Eleusis in honor of the deities, sporting events were held upon the threshing floors, and at the feast there was a procession of Poseidon (worshipped here as Phytalmios, god of plants). Although a large part of Haloa was for women, the general procession and sporting events were open to all citizens. The feast, or banquet, consisted of “gentle” or civilized foods—cereals, fish, possibly fowl, and “cakes shaped like the symbols of sex,” but nothing of flesh. Other forbidden Eleusinian foods included