Hence at the festival of the Thesmophoria they were
thrown, along with pigs and other agents or emblems of fecundity,
into the sacred vaults of Demeter for the purpose of quickening the
ground and the wombs of women.
Like tree-spirits in general, Attis was apparently thought to wield
power over the fruits of the earth or even to be identical with the
corn. One of his epithets was "very fruitful": he was addressed as
the "reaped green (or yellow) ear of corn"; and the story of his
sufferings, death, and resurrection was interpreted as the ripe
grain wounded by the reaper, buried in the granary, and coming to
life again when it is sown in the ground. A statue of him in the
Lateran Museum at Rome clearly indicates his relation to the fruits
of the earth, and particularly to the corn; for it represents him
with a bunch of ears of corn and fruit in his hand, and a wreath of
pine-cones, pomegranates, and other fruits on his head, while from
the top of his Phrygian cap ears of corn are sprouting. On a stone
urn, which contained the ashes of an Archigallus or high-priest of
Attis, the same idea is expressed in a slightly different way.
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