ALÒE ('Αλὼς, from ἄλως “threshing-floor”). - A festival of the Athenian calendar, falling in the month of Posideon (15 Dec.-15 Jan.), dedicated to Demeter and celebrated both in Athens and in Eleusis; agrarian in character, it was the festival of threshing, whose celebration in a winter month is explained by the association with it, as with other Attic festivals, of Dionysus, to whom the vine is sacred, whose harvest is arranged and enjoyed at the beginning of winter.
The festival was celebrated exclusively by women, who offered bloodless libations (τέλανος), presented by a priestess (Demosthenes, Or., 59, 116); it admitted obscene expressions (αἰσχρολογία) suggested by the priestess (Schol. Lucian, Dial. mer., 7, 4) and accompanied by the display of phallic figurines, with the sacred-magical meaning of fertility. The festival concluded with a banquet at which wine was poured out in abundance, but from which those foods forbidden in the Eleusinian mysteries were excluded: fish, cock, beans, apples (Porphyry, De abst., 4, 16).