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The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings: the first at Scirum Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8. in commemoration of the most ancient of sowings; the second in Raria,Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8. and the third near the base of the Acropolis, the so-called Buzygius Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8. (the ox-yoking). But most sacred of all such sowings is the marital sowing and ploughing for the procreation of children. It is a beautiful epithet which Sophocles applied to Aphrodite when he called her bountiful-bearing Cytherea. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., p. 310, Sophocles, No. 763. Therefore man and wife ought especially to indulge in this with circumspection, keeping themselves pure from all unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and not sowing seed from which they are unwilling to have any offspring, Cf. Plato, Laws, p. 839 A. and from which if any issue does result, they are ashamed of it, and try to conceal it.
