Modern scholars generally take this to indicate that the cult had magical formulae consisting of sexual language intended to arouse or awaken the fertility of the earth.
During the tumult, the two maidens were stoned to death, whereupon the Troezenians paid divine honors to them, and instituted the festival of the Lithobolia, a stone-throwing rite of symbolic battles between participants.
[8] When around 540 BCE Aegina separated itself from Epidaurus, which had till then been regarded as its metropolis, the Aeginetans, who had sacred traditions in common with the Epidaurians, took away the two statues of Auxesia and Damia, and erected them in a part of their own island called Oea, where they offered sacrifices and celebrated mysteries.
When the Epidaurians, in consequence of this, ceased to perform the sacrifices at Athens, and the Athenians heard of the statues being carried to Aegina, they demanded them back from the Aeginetans.
[10][11][12][13] Some of this myth was used by the historian Herodotus to explain the "ancient enmity" between Aegineta and Athens, which persisted into his time, and even goes so far as to use it to justify the state of modern fashion in these cities.