Note 40 — MODERN GREECE.
Reading edition
It was customary at Eleusis, on the fifth day of the festival, for men and women to run about with torches in their hands, and also to dedicate torches to Ceres, and to contend who should present the largest. This was done in memory of the journey of Ceres in search of Proserpine, during which she was lighted by a torch kindled in the flames of Etna.—Porter’s Antiquities of Greece, vol. i. p. 392.