Siroi

The siroi were magazines into which were collected the «aparchai», the first fruits of the year’s agricultural produce, at a ratio of at least 1/200 for wheat and the double 1/600 for barley, which all the cities had to offer to goddess Demeter, as a kind of tax.

The «aparchai» were received by the priests of the goddess and it was demanded their prompt and timely delivery before the Eleusinian Mysteries were performed in the autumn, as much as the high quality of the offered agricultural products.

The siros (magazine) of Peisistratus time (6^th cent. BC) lies west of the Lesser Propylaea, has a rectangular ground plan and is built in a particularly neat polygonal system of masonry of grey-blue eleusinian stone blocks. It continues further to the west, beneath the succeeding Late Roman wall that was built of various and different building materials for the protection of the Sanctuary during the 3^rd cent. AD.

In the east section of the sanctuary, in the area between the Peisistratean and Periclean wall, there is preserved at a considerable height, one of the two rows of square pillars which supported the flat roof of a colonnaded building with triangular ground plan, which served as magazine in the era of Pericles (5^th cent. BC). There are also preserved the foundations of the large and elongated (60x6m) siroi (magazines) of Roman times.

Roman Cistern The Lesser Propylaea