The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 07 of 12)

Dionysus as a goat. Live goats rent and devoured by his worshippers.

Another animal whose form Dionysus assumed was the goat. One of his names was “Kid.”[84 - Hesychius, s. v. Ἔριφος ὁ Διόνυσος, on which there is a marginal gloss ὁ μικρὸς αἴξ, ὁ ἐν τῷ ἔαρι φαινόμενος, ἤγουν ὁ πρώϊμος; Stephanus Byzantius, s. v. Ἀκρώρεια.] At Athens and at Hermion he was worshipped under the title of “the one of the Black Goatskin,” and a legend ran that on a certain occasion he had appeared clad in the skin from which he took the title.[85 - Pausanias, ii. 35. 1; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Acharn. 146; Etymologicum Magnum, s. v. Ἀπατούρια, p. 118. 54 sqq.; Suidas, s. vv. Ἀπατούρια and μελαναίγιδα Διόνυσον; Nonnus, Dionys. xxvii. 302. Compare Conon, Narrat. 39, where for Μελανθίδῃ we should perhaps read Μελαναίγιδι.] In the wine-growing district of Phlius, where in autumn the plain is still thickly mantled with the red and golden foliage of the fading vines, there stood of old a bronze image of a goat, which the husbandmen plastered with gold-leaf as a means of protecting their vines against blight.[86 - Pausanias, ii. 13. 6. On their return from Troy the Greeks are said to have found goats and an image of Dionysus in a cave of Euboea (Pausanias, i. 23. 1).] The image probably represented the vine-god himself. To save him from the wrath of Hera, his father Zeus changed the youthful Dionysus into a kid;[87 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 4. 3.] and when the gods fled to Egypt to escape the fury of Typhon, Dionysus was turned into a goat.[88 - Ovid, Metam. v. 329; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 28; Mythographi Vaticani, ed. G. H. Bode, i. 86, p. 29.] Hence when his worshippers rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw,[89 - Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 19. Compare Suidas, s. v. αἰγίζειν. As fawns appear to have been also torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus (Photius, Lexicon, s. v. νεβρίζειν; Harpocration, s. v. νεβρίζων), it is probable that the fawn was another of the god's embodiments. But of this there seems no direct evidence. Fawn-skins were worn both by the god and his worshippers (Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 30). Similarly the female Bacchanals wore goat-skins (Hesychius, s. v. τραγηφόροι).] they must have believed that they were eating the body and blood of the god.

Custom of rending and devouring animals and men as a religious rite. Ceremonial cannibalism among the Indians of British Columbia.

The custom of tearing in pieces the bodies of animals and of men and then devouring them raw has been practised as a religious rite by savages in modern times. We need not therefore dismiss as a fable the testimony of antiquity to the observance of similar rites among the frenzied worshippers of Bacchus. An English missionary to the Coast Indians of British Columbia has thus described a scene like the cannibal orgies of the Bacchanals. After mentioning that an old chief had ordered a female slave to be dragged to the beach, murdered, and thrown into the water, he proceeds as follows: “I did not see the murder, but, immediately after, I saw crowds of people running out of those houses near to where the corpse was thrown, and forming themselves into groups at a good distance away. This I learnt was from fear of what was to follow. Presently two bands of furious wretches appeared, each headed by a man in a state of nudity. They gave vent to the most unearthly sounds, and the two naked men made themselves look as unearthly as possible, proceeding in a creeping kind of stoop, and stepping like two proud horses, at the same time shooting forward each arm alternately, which they held out at full length for a little time in the most defiant manner. Besides this, the continual jerking their heads back, causing their long black hair to twist about, added much to their savage appearance. For some time they pretended to be seeking the body, and the instant they came where it lay they commenced screaming and rushing round it like so many angry wolves. Finally they seized it, dragged it out of the water, and laid it on the beach, where I was told the naked men would commence tearing it to pieces with their teeth. The two bands of men immediately surrounded them, and so hid their horrid work. In a few minutes the crowd broke into two, when each of the naked cannibals appeared with half of the body in his hands. Separating a few yards, they commenced, amid horrid yells, their still more horrid feast. The sight was too terrible to behold. I left the gallery with a depressed heart. I may mention that the two bands of savages just alluded to belong to that class which the whites term ‘medicine-men.’ ” The same writer informs us that at the winter ceremonials of these Indians “the cannibal, on such occasions, is generally supplied with two, three, or four human bodies, which he tears to pieces before his audience. Several persons, either from bravado or as a charm, present their arms for him to bite. I have seen several whom he has bitten, and I hear two have died from the effects.” And when corpses were not forthcoming, these cannibals apparently seized and devoured living people. Mr. Duncan has seen hundreds of the Tsimshian Indians sitting in their canoes which they had just pushed off from the shore in order to escape being torn to pieces by a party of prowling cannibals. Others of these Indians contented themselves with tearing dogs to pieces, while their attendants kept up a growling noise, or a whoop, “which was seconded by a screeching noise made from an instrument which they believe to be the abode of a spirit.”[90 - Mr. Duncan, quoted by Commander R. C. Mayne, Four Years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island (London, 1862), pp. 284-288. The instrument which made the screeching sound was no doubt a bull-roarer, a flat piece of stick whirled at the end of a string so as to produce a droning or screaming note according to the speed of revolution. Such instruments are used by the Koskimo Indians of the same region at their cannibal and other rites. See Fr. Boas, “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1895 (Washington, 1897), pp. 610, 611.]

Religious societies of Cannibals and Dog-eaters among the Indians of British Columbia. Live goats rent in pieces and devoured by fanatics in Morocco.

Mr. Duncan's account of these savage rites has been fully borne out by later observation. Among the Kwakiutl Indians the Cannibals (Hamatsas) are the highest in rank of the Secret Societies. They devour corpses, bite pieces out of living people, and formerly ate slaves who had been killed for the purpose. But when their fury has subsided, they are obliged to pay compensation to the persons whom they have bitten and to the owners of slaves whom they have killed. The indemnity consists sometimes of blankets, sometimes of canoes. In the latter case the tariff is fixed: one bite, one canoe. For some time after eating human flesh the cannibal has to observe a great many rules, which regulate his eating and drinking, his going out and his coming in, his clothing and his intercourse with his wife.[91 - Fr. Boas, op. cit. pp. 437-443, 527 sq., 536, 537 sq., 579, 664; id., in “Fifth Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada,” Report of the British Association for 1889, pp. 54-56 (separate reprint); id., in “Sixth Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada,” Report of the British Association for 1890, pp. 62, 65 sq. (separate reprint). As to the rules observed after the eating of human flesh, see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 188-190.] Similar customs prevail among other tribes of the same coast, such as the Bella Coola, the Tsimshian, the Niska, and the Nootka. In the Nootka tribe members of the Panther Society tear dogs to pieces and devour them. They wear masks armed with canine teeth.[92 - Fr. Boas, “The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians,” Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1895 (Washington, 1897), pp. 649 sq., 658 sq.; id., in “Sixth Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada,” Report of the British Association for 1890, p. 51; (separate reprint); id., “Seventh Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada,” Report of the British Association for 1891, pp. 10 sq. (separate reprint); id., “Tenth Report on the North-western Tribes of Canada,” Report of the British Association for 1895, p. 58 (separate reprint).] So among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands there is one religion of cannibalism and another of dog-eating. The cannibals in a state of frenzy, real or pretended, bite flesh out of the extended arms of their fellow villagers. When they issue forth with cries of Hop-pop to observe this solemn rite, all who are of a different religious persuasion make haste to get out of their way; but men of the cannibal creed and of stout hearts will resolutely hold out their arms to be bitten. The sect of dog-eaters cut or tear dogs to pieces and devour some of the flesh; but they have to pay for the dogs which they consume in their religious enthusiasm.[93 - G. M. Dawson, Report on the Queen Charlotte Islands, 1878 (Montreal, 1880), pp. 125 b, 128 b.] In the performance of these savage rites the frenzied actors are believed to be inspired by a Cannibal Spirit and a Dog-eating Spirit respectively.[94 - J. R. Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida (Leyden and New York, 1905), pp. 156, 160 sq., 170 sq., 181 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History). For details as to the practice of these savage rites among the Indian coast tribes of British Columbia, see my Totemism and Exogamy (London, 1910), iii. pp. 501, 511 sq., 515 sq., 519, 521, 526, 535 sq., 537, 539 sq., 542 sq., 544, 545.] Again, in Morocco there is an order of saints known as Isowa or Aïsawa, followers of Mohammed ben Isa or Aïsa of Mequinez, whose tomb is at Fez. Every year on their founder's birthday they assemble at his shrine or elsewhere and holding each other's hands dance a frantic dance round a fire. “While the mad dance is still proceeding, a sudden rush is made from the sanctuary, and the dancers, like men delirious, speed away to a place where live goats are tethered in readiness. At sight of these animals the fury of the savage and excited crowd reaches its height. In a few minutes the wretched animals are cut, or rather torn to pieces, and an orgy takes place over the raw and quivering flesh. When they seem satiated, the Emkaddim, who is generally on horseback, and carries a long stick, forms a sort of procession, preceded by wild music, if such discordant sounds will bear the name. Words can do no justice to the frightful scene which now ensues. The naked savages – for on these occasions a scanty piece of cotton is all their clothing – with their long black hair, ordinarily worn in plaits, tossed about by the rapid to-and-fro movements of the head, with faces and hands reeking with blood, and uttering loud cries resembling the bleating of goats, again enter the town. The place is now at their mercy, and the people avoid them as much as possible by shutting themselves up in their houses. A Christian or a Jew would run great risk of losing his life if either were found in the street. Goats are pushed out from the doors, and these the fanatics tear immediately to pieces with their hands, and then dispute over the morsels of bleeding flesh, as though they were ravenous wolves instead of men. Snakes also are thrown to them as tests of their divine frenzy, and these share the fate of the goats. Sometimes a luckless dog, straying as dogs will stray in a tumult, is seized on. Then the laymen, should any be at hand, will try to prevent the desecration of pious mouths. But the fanatics sometimes prevail, and the unclean animal, abhorred by the mussulman, is torn in pieces and devoured, or pretended to be devoured, with indiscriminating rage.”[95 - A. Leared, Morocco and the Moors (London, 1876), pp. 267-269. Compare Budgett Meakin, The Moors (London, 1902), pp. 331 sq. The same order of fanatics also exists and holds similar orgies in Algeria, especially at the town of Tlemcen. See E. Doutté, Les Aïssâoua à Tlemcen (Châlons-sur-Marne, 1900), p. 13.]

Later misinterpretations of the custom of killing a god in animal form.

The custom of killing a god in animal form, which we shall examine more in detail further on, belongs to a very early stage of human culture, and is apt in later times to be misunderstood. The advance of thought tends to strip the old animal and plant gods of their bestial and vegetable husk, and to leave their human attributes (which are always the kernel of the conception) as the final and sole residuum. In other words, animal and plant gods tend to become purely anthropomorphic. When they have become wholly or nearly so, the animals and plants which were at first the deities themselves, still retain a vague and ill-understood connexion with the anthropomorphic gods who have been developed out of them. The origin of the relationship between the deity and the animal or plant having been forgotten, various stories are invented to explain it. These explanations may follow one of two lines according as they are based on the habitual or on the exceptional treatment of the sacred animal or plant. The sacred animal was habitually spared, and only exceptionally slain; and accordingly the myth might be devised to explain either why it was spared or why it was killed. Devised for the former purpose, the myth would tell of some service rendered to the deity by the animal; devised for the latter purpose, the myth would tell of some injury inflicted by the animal on the god. The reason given for sacrificing goats to Dionysus exemplifies a myth of the latter sort. They were sacrificed to him, it was said, because they injured the vine.[96 - Varro, Rerum rusticarum, i. 2. 19; Virgil, Georg. ii. 376-381, with the comments of Servius on the passage and on Aen. iii. 118; Ovid, Fasti, i. 353 sqq.; id., Metamorph. xv. 114 sq.; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 30.] Now the goat, as we have seen, was originally an embodiment of the god himself. But when the god had divested himself of his animal character and had become essentially anthropomorphic, the killing of the goat in his worship came to be regarded no longer as a slaying of the deity himself, but as a sacrifice offered to him; and since some reason had to be assigned why the goat in particular should be sacrificed, it was alleged that this was a punishment inflicted on the goat for injuring the vine, the object of the god's especial care. Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the deity is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat's blood;[97 - Euripides, Bacchae, 138 sq.: ἀγρεύων αἷμα τραγοκτόνον, ὠμοφάγον χάριν.] and the bull-god Dionysus is called “eater of bulls.”[98 - Schol. on Aristophanes, Frogs, 357.] On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that wherever a deity is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the deity himself.[99 - Hera αἰγοφάγος at Sparta, Pausanias, iii. 15. 9; Hesychius, s. v. αἰγοφάγος (compare the representation of Hera clad in a goat's skin, with the animal's head and horns over her head, Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler der alten Kunst, i. No. 229 b; and the similar representation of the Lanuvinian Juno, W. H. Roscher, Lexikon d. griech. u. röm. Mythologie, ii. 605 sqq.); Zeus αἰγοφάγος, Etymologicum Magnum, s. v. αἰγοφάγος, p. 27. 52 (compare Scholiast on Oppianus, Halieut. iii. 10; L. Stephani, in Compte-Rendu de la Commission Impériale Archéologique pour l'année 1869 (St. Petersburg, 1870), pp. 16-18); Apollo ὀψοφάγος at Elis, Athenaeus, viii. 36, p. 346 b; Artemis καπροφάγος in Samos, Hesychius, s. v. καπροφάγος; compare id., s. v. κριοφάγος. Divine titles derived from killing animals are probably to be similarly explained, as Dionysus αἰγόβολος (Pausanias, ix. 8. 2); Rhea or Hecate κυνοσφαγής (J. Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron, 77); Apollo λυκοκτόνος (Sophocles, Electra, 6); Apollo σαυροκτόνος (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 70).] Later on we shall find that some savages propitiate dead bears and whales by offering them portions of their own bodies.[100 - See below, vol. ii. pp. 184, 194, 196, 197 sq., 233.]

Human sacrifices in the worship of Dionysus.

All this, however, does not explain why a deity of vegetation should appear in animal form. But the consideration of that point had better be deferred till we have discussed the character and attributes of Demeter. Meantime it remains to mention that in some places, instead of an animal, a human being was torn in pieces at the rites of Dionysus. This was the practice in Chios and Tenedos;[101 - Porphyry, De abstinentia, ii. 55.] and at Potniae in Boeotia the tradition ran that it had been formerly the custom to sacrifice to the goat-smiting Dionysus a child, for whom a goat was afterwards substituted.[102 - Pausanias, ix. 8. 2.] At Orchomenus, as we have seen, the human victim was taken from the women of an old royal family.[103 - See The Dying God, pp. 163 sq.] As the slain bull or goat represented the slain god, so, we may suppose, the human victim also represented him.

The legendary deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus may be reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus.

The legends of the deaths of Pentheus and Lycurgus, two kings who are said to have been torn to pieces, the one by Bacchanals, the other by horses, for their opposition to the rites of Dionysus, may be, as I have already suggested,[104 - Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 332 sq.] distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing divine kings in the character of Dionysus and of dispersing the fragments of their broken bodies over the fields for the purpose of fertilising them. In regard to Lycurgus, king of the Thracian tribe of the Edonians, it is expressly said that his subjects at the bidding of an oracle caused him to be rent in pieces by horses for the purpose of restoring the fertility of the ground after a period of barrenness and dearth.[105 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. 1.] There is no improbability in the tradition. We have seen that in Africa and other parts of the world kings or chiefs have often been put to death by their people for similar reasons.[106 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 344, 345, 346, 352, 354, 366 sq.] Further, it is significant that King Lycurgus is said to have slain his own son Dryas with an axe in a fit of madness, mistaking him for a vine-branch.[107 - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. 1.] Have we not in this tradition a reminiscence of a custom of sacrificing the king's son in place of the father? Similarly Athamas, a King of Thessaly or Boeotia, is said to have been doomed by an oracle to be sacrificed at the altar in order to remove the curse of barrenness which afflicted his country; however, he contrived to evade the sentence and in a fit of madness killed his own son Learchus, mistaking him for a wild beast. That this legend was not a mere myth is made probable by a custom observed at Alus down to historical times: the eldest male scion of the royal house was regularly sacrificed in due form to Laphystian Zeus if he ever set foot within the town-hall.[108 - Herodotus, vii. 197; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 9. 1 sq.; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Clouds, 257; J. Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 21; Hyginus, Fabulae, 1-5. See The Dying God, pp. 161-163.] The close resemblance between the legends of King Athamas and King Lycurgus furnishes a ground for believing both legends to be based on a real custom of sacrificing either the king himself or one of his sons for the good of the country; and the story that the king's son Dryas perished because his frenzied father mistook him for a vine-branch fits in well with the theory that the victim in these sacrifices represented the vine-god Dionysus. It is probably no mere coincidence that Dionysus himself is said to have been torn in pieces at Thebes,[109 - Clemens Romanus, Recognitiones, x. 24 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, i. col. 1434).] the very place where according to legend the same fate befell king Pentheus at the hands of the frenzied votaries of the vine-god.[110 - Euripides, Bacchae, 43 sqq., 1043 sqq.; Theocritus, Idyl. xxvi.; Pausanias, ii. 2. 7. Strictly speaking, the murder of Pentheus is said to have been perpetrated not at Thebes, of which he was king, but on Mount Cithaeron.]

Survival of Dionysiac rites among the modern Thracian peasantry.

The theory that in prehistoric times Greek and Thracian kings or their sons may have been dismembered in the character of the vine-god or the corn-god for the purpose of fertilising the earth or quickening the vines has received of late years some confirmation from the discovery that down to the present time in Thrace, the original home of Dionysus, a drama is still annually performed which reproduces with remarkable fidelity some of the most striking traits in the Dionysiac myth and ritual.[111 - See Mr. R. M. Dawkins, “The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxvi. (1906) pp. 191-206. Mr. Dawkins describes the ceremonies partly from his own observation, partly from an account of them published by Mr. G. M. Vizyenos in a Greek periodical Θρακικὴ Ἐπετηρίς, of which only one number was published at Athens in 1897. From his personal observations Mr. Dawkins was able to confirm the accuracy of Mr. Vizyenos's account.] In a former part of this work I have already called attention to this interesting survival of paganism among a Christian peasantry;[112 - Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 333 sq.] but it seems desirable and appropriate in this place to draw out somewhat more fully the parallelism between the modern drama and the ancient worship.

Drama annually performed at the Carnival in the villages round Viza, an old Thracian capital. The actors in the drama.

The drama, which may reasonably be regarded as a direct descendant of the Dionysiac rites, is annually performed at the Carnival in all the Christian villages which cluster round Viza, the ancient Bizya, a town of Thrace situated about midway between Adrianople and Constantinople. In antiquity the city was the capital of the Thracian tribe of the Asti; the kings had their palace there,[113 - Strabo, vii. frag. 48; Stephanus Byzantius, s. v. Βιζύη.] probably in the acropolis, of which some fine walls are still standing. Inscriptions preserved in the modern town record the names of some of these old kings.[114 - R. M. Dawkins, op. cit. p. 192.] The date of the celebration is Cheese Monday, as it is locally called, which is the Monday of the last week of Carnival. At Viza itself the mummery has been shorn of some of its ancient features, but these have been kept up at the villages and have been particularly observed and recorded at the village of St. George (Haghios Gheorgios). It is to the drama as acted at that village that the following description specially applies. The principal parts in the drama are taken by two men disguised in goatskins. Each of them wears a headdress made of a complete goatskin, which is stuffed so as to rise a foot or more like a shako over his head, while the skin falls over the face, forming a mask with holes cut for the eyes and mouth. Their shoulders are thickly padded with hay to protect them from the blows which used to be rained very liberally on their backs. Fawnskins on their shoulders and goatskins on their legs are or used to be part of their equipment, and another indispensable part of it is a number of sheep-bells tied round their waists. One of the two skin-clad actors carries a bow and the other a wooden effigy of the male organ of generation. Both these actors must be married men. According to Mr. Vizyenos, they are chosen for periods of four years. Two unmarried boys dressed as girls and sometimes called brides also take part in the play; and a man disguised as an old woman in rags carries a mock baby in a basket; the brat is supposed to be a seven-months' child born out of wedlock and begotten by an unknown father. The basket in which the hopeful infant is paraded bears the ancient name of the winnowing-fan (likni, contracted from liknon) and the babe itself receives the very title “He of the Winnowing-fan” (Liknites) which in antiquity was applied to Dionysus. Two other actors, clad in rags with blackened faces and armed with stout saplings, play the parts of a gypsy-man and his wife; others personate policemen armed with swords and whips; and the troupe is completed by a man who discourses music on a bagpipe.

The ceremonies include the forging of a ploughshare, a mock marriage, and a pretence of death and resurrection.

Such are the masqueraders. The morning of the day on which they perform their little drama is spent by them going from door to door collecting bread, eggs, or money. At every door the two skin-clad maskers knock, the boys disguised as girls dance, and the gypsy man and wife enact an obscene pantomime on the straw-heap before the house. When every house in the village has been thus visited, the troop takes up position on the open space before the village church, where the whole population has already mustered to witness the performance. After a dance hand in hand, in which all the actors take part, the two skin-clad maskers withdraw and leave the field to the gypsies, who now pretend to forge a ploughshare, the man making believe to hammer the share and his wife to work the bellows. At this point the old woman's baby is supposed to grow up at a great pace, to develop a huge appetite for meat and drink, and to clamour for a wife. One of the skin-clad men now pursues one of the two pretended brides, and a mock marriage is celebrated between the couple. After these nuptials have been performed with a parody of a real wedding, the mock bridegroom is shot by his comrade with the bow and falls down on his face like dead. His slayer thereupon feigns to skin him with a knife; but the dead man's wife laments over her deceased husband with loud cries, throwing herself across his prostrate body. In this lamentation the slayer himself and all the other actors join in: a Christian funeral service is burlesqued; and the pretended corpse is lifted up as if to be carried to the grave. At this point, however, the dead man disconcerts the preparations for his burial by suddenly coming to life again and getting up. So ends the drama of death and resurrection.

The ceremonies also include a simulation of ploughing and sowing by skin-clad men, accompanied by prayers for good crops.

The next act opens with a repetition of the pretence of forging a ploughshare, but this time the gypsy man hammers on a real share. When the implement is supposed to have been fashioned, a real plough is brought forward, the mockery appears to cease, the two boys dressed as girls are yoked to the plough and drag it twice round the village square contrary to the way of the sun. One of the two skin-clad men walks at the tail of the plough, the other guides it in front, and a third man follows in the rear scattering seed from a basket. After the two rounds have been completed, the gypsy and his wife are yoked to the plough, and drag it a third time round the square, the two skin-clad men still playing the part of ploughmen. At Viza the plough is drawn by the skin-clad men themselves. While the plough is going its rounds, followed by the sower sowing the seed, the people pray aloud, saying, “May wheat be ten piastres the bushel! Rye five piastres the bushel! Amen, O God, that the poor may eat! Yea, O God, that poor folk be filled!” This ends the performance. The evening is spent in feasting on the proceeds of the house-to-house visitation which took place in the morning.[115 - R. M. Dawkins, “The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxvi. (1906) pp. 193-201.]

Kindred ceremony performed by a masked and skin-clad man who is called a king.

A kindred festival is observed on the same day of the Carnival at Kosti, a place in the extreme north of Thrace, near the Black Sea. There a man dressed in sheepskins or goatskins, with a mask on his face, bells round his neck, and a broom in his hand, goes round the village collecting food and presents. He is addressed as a king and escorted with music. With him go boys dressed as girls, and another boy, not so disguised, who carries wine in a wooden bottle and gives of it to every householder to drink in a cup, receiving a gift in return. The king then mounts a two-wheeled cart and is drawn to the church. He carries seed in his hand, and at the church two bands of men, one of married men and the other of unmarried men, try each in turn to induce the king to throw the seed on them. Finally he casts it on the ground in front of the church. The ceremony ends with stripping the king of his clothes and flinging him into the river, after which he resumes his usual dress.[116 - R. M. Dawkins, op. cit. pp. 201 sq.]

Analogy of these modern Thracian ceremonies to the ancient rites of Dionysus.

In these ceremonies, still annually held at and near an old capital of Thracian kings, the points of similarity to the ritual of the ancient Thracian deity Dionysus are sufficiently obvious.[117 - They have been clearly indicated by Mr. R. M. Dawkins, op. cit. pp. 203 sqq. Compare W. Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 15 sqq., who fully recognises the connexion of the modern Thracian ceremonies with the ancient rites of Dionysus.] The goatskins in which the principal actors are disguised remind us of the identification of Dionysus with a goat: the infant, cradled in a winnowing-fan and taking its name from the implement, answers exactly to the traditions and the monuments which represent the infant Dionysus as similarly cradled and similarly named: the pretence that the baby is a seven-months' child born out of wedlock and begotten by an unknown father tallies precisely with the legend that Dionysus was born prematurely in the seventh month as the offspring of an intrigue between a mortal woman and a mysterious divine father:[118 - Lucian, Dialogi Deorum, ix. 2; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 4. 4. According to the latter writer Dionysus was born in the sixth month.] the same coarse symbol of reproductive energy which characterised the ancient ritual of Dionysus figures conspicuously in the modern drama: the annual mock marriage of the goatskin-clad mummer with the pretended bride may be compared with the annual pretence of marrying Dionysus to the Queen of Athens: and the simulated slaughter and resurrection of the same goatskin-clad actor may be compared with the traditional slaughter and resurrection of the god himself. Further, the ceremony of ploughing, in which after his resurrection the goatskin-clad mummer takes a prominent part, fits in well not only with the legend that Dionysus was the first to yoke oxen to the plough, but also with the symbolism of the winnowing-fan in his worship; while the prayers for plentiful crops which accompany the ploughing accord with the omens of an abundant harvest which were drawn of old from the mystic light seen to illumine by night one of his ancient sanctuaries in Thrace. Lastly, in the ceremony as observed at Kosti the giving of wine by the king's attendant is an act worthy of the wine-god: the throwing of seed by the king can only be interpreted, like the ploughing, as a charm to promote the fertility of the ground; and the royal title borne by the principal masker harmonises well with the theory that the part of the god of the corn and the wine was of old sustained by the Thracian kings who reigned at Bisya.

The modern Thracian celebration seems to correspond most closely to the ancient Athenian festival of the Anthesteria.

If we ask, To what ancient festival of Dionysus does the modern celebration of the Carnival in Thrace most nearly correspond? the answer can be hardly doubtful. The Thracian drama of the mock marriage of the goatskin-clad mummer, his mimic death and resurrection, and his subsequent ploughing, corresponds both in date and in character most nearly to the Athenian festival of the Anthesteria, which was celebrated at Athens during three days in early spring, towards the end of February or the beginning of March. Thus the date of the Anthesteria could not fall far from, and it might sometimes actually coincide with, the last week of the Carnival, the date of the Thracian celebration. While the details of the festival of the Anthesteria are obscure, its general character is well known. It was a festival both of wine-drinking and of the dead, whose souls were supposed to revisit the city and to go about the streets, just as in modern Europe and in many other parts of the world the ghosts of the departed are still believed to return to their old homes on one day of the year and to be entertained by their relatives at a solemn Feast of All Souls.[119 - As to such festivals of All Souls see Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 301-318.] But the Dionysiac nature of the festival was revealed not merely by the opening of the wine-vats and the wassailing which went on throughout the city among freemen and slaves alike; on the second day of the festival the marriage of Dionysus with the Queen of Athens was celebrated with great solemnity at the Bucolium or Ox-stall.[120 - The passages of ancient authors which refer to the Anthesteria are collected by Professor Martin P. Nilsson, Studia de Dionysiis Atticis (Lund, 1900), pp. 148 sqq. As to the festival, which has been much discussed of late years, see August Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp. 345 sqq.; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 384 sqq.; G. F. Schoemann, Griechische Alterthümer

(Berlin, 1902), ii. 516 sqq.; E. Rohde, Psyche

(Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903), i. 236 sqq.; Martin P. Nilsson, op. cit. pp. 115 sqq.; P. Foucart, Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique (Paris, 1904), pp. 107 sqq.; Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion

(Cambridge, 1908), pp. 32 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, v. (Oxford, 1909) pp. 214 sqq. As to the marriage of Dionysus to the Queen of Athens, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 136 sq.] It has been suggested with much probability[121 - By Professor U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin, 1893), ii. 42; and afterwards by Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,

p. 536.] that at this sacred marriage in the Ox-stall the god was represented wholly or partly in bovine shape, whether by an image or by an actor dressed in the hide and wearing the horns of a bull; for, as we have seen, Dionysus was often supposed to assume the form of a bull and to present himself in that guise to his worshippers. If this conjecture should prove to be correct – though a demonstration of it can hardly be expected – the sacred marriage of the Queen to the Bull-god at Athens would be parallel to the sacred marriage of the Queen to the Bull-god at Cnossus, according to the interpretation which I have suggested of the myth of Pasiphae and the Minotaur;[122 - The Dying God, p. 71.] only whereas the bull-god at Cnossus, if I am right, stood for the Sun, the bull-god at Athens stood for the powers of vegetation, especially the corn and the vines. It would not be surprising that among a cattle-breeding people in early days the bull, regarded as a type of strength and reproductive energy, should be employed to symbolise and represent more than one of the great powers of nature. If Dionysus did indeed figure as a bull at his marriage, it is not improbable that on that occasion his representative, whether a real bull or a man dressed in a bull's hide, took part in a ceremony of ploughing; for we have seen that the invention of yoking oxen to the plough was ascribed to Dionysus, and we know that the Athenians performed a sacred ceremony of ploughing, which went by the name of the Ox-yoked Ploughing and took place in a field or other open piece of ground at the foot of the Acropolis.[123 - Plutarch, Conjugalia Praecepta, 42.] It is a reasonable conjecture that the field of the Ox-yoked Ploughing may have adjoined the building called the Ox-stall in which the marriage of Dionysus with the Queen was solemnised;[124 - Miss J. E. Harrison, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (London, 1890), pp. 166 sq.] for that building is known to have been near the Prytaneum or Town-Hall on the northern slope of the Acropolis.[125 - Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 3. As to the situation of the Prytaneum see my note on Pausanias, i. 18. 3 (vol. ii. p. 172).]

Theory that the rites of the Anthesteria comprised a drama of the violent death and resurrection of Dionysus.

Thus on the whole the ancient festival of the Anthesteria, so far as its features are preserved by tradition or can be restored by the use of reasonable conjecture, presents several important analogies to the modern Thracian Carnival in respect of wine-drinking, a mock marriage of disguised actors, and a ceremony of ploughing. The resemblance between the ancient and the modern ritual would be still closer if some eminent modern scholars, who wrote before the discovery of the Thracian Carnival, and whose judgment was therefore not biassed by its analogy to the Athenian festival, are right in holding that another important feature of the Anthesteria was the dramatic death and resurrection of Dionysus.[126 - August Mommsen, Heortologie, pp. 371 sqq.; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, pp. 398 sqq.; P. Foucart, Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique, pp. 138 sqq.] They point out that at the marriage of Dionysus fourteen Sacred Women officiated at fourteen altars;[127 - Demosthenes, Contra Neaer. 73, pp. 1369 sq.; Julius Pollux, viii. 108; Etymologicum Magnum, p. 227, s. v. γεραῖραι; Hesychius, s. v. γεραραί.] that the number of the Titans, who tore Dionysus in pieces, was fourteen, namely seven male and seven female;[128 - Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 505.] and that Osiris, a god who in some respects corresponded closely to Dionysus, is said to have been rent by Typhon into fourteen fragments.[129 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 18, 42.] Hence they conjecture that at Athens the body of Dionysus was dramatically broken into fourteen fragments, one for each of the fourteen altars, and that it was afterwards dramatically pieced together and restored to life by the fourteen Sacred Women, just as the broken body of Osiris was pieced together by a company of gods and goddesses and restored to life by his sister Isis.[130 - The resurrection of Osiris is not described by Plutarch in his treatise Isis et Osiris, which is still our principal source for the myth of the god; but it is fortunately recorded in native Egyptian writings. See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 274. P. Foucart supposes that the resurrection of Dionysus was enacted at the Anthesteria; August Mommsen prefers to suppose that it was enacted in the following month at the Lesser Mysteries.] The conjecture is ingenious and plausible, but with our existing sources of information it must remain a conjecture and nothing more. Could it be established, it would forge another strong link in the chain of evidence which binds the modern Thracian Carnival to the ancient Athenian Anthesteria; for in that case the drama of the divine death and resurrection would have to be added to the other features which these two festivals of spring possess in common, and we should have to confess that Greece had what we may call its Good Friday and its Easter Sunday long before the events took place in Judaea which diffused these two annual commemorations of the Dying and Reviving God over a great part of the civilised world. From so simple a beginning may flow consequences so far-reaching and impressive; for in the light of the rude Thracian ceremony we may surmise that the high tragedy of the death and resurrection of Dionysus originated in a rustic mummers' play acted by ploughmen for the purpose of fertilising the brown earth which they turned up with the gleaming share in sunshiny days of spring, as they followed the slow-paced oxen down the long furrows in the fallow field. Later on we shall see that a play of the same sort is still acted, or was acted down to recent years, by English yokels on Plough Monday.

Legends of human sacrifice in the worship of Dionysus may be mere misinterpretations of ritual.

But before we pass from the tragic myth and ritual of Dionysus to the sweeter story and milder worship of Demeter and Persephone, the true Greek deities of the corn, it is fair to admit that the legends of human sacrifice, which have left so dark a stain on the memory of the old Thracian god, may have been nothing more than mere misinterpretations of a sacrificial ritual in which an animal victim was treated as a human being. For example, at Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to Dionysus was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in child-bed.[131 - Aelian, De Natura Animalium, xii. 34. Compare W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites

(London, 1894), pp. 300 sqq.] At Rome a she-goat was sacrificed to Vedijovis as if it were a human victim.[132 - Aulus Gellius, v. 12. 12.] Yet on the other hand it is equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that these curious rites were themselves mitigations of an older and ruder custom of sacrificing human beings, and that the later pretence of treating the sacrificial victims as if they were human beings was merely part of a pious and merciful fraud, which palmed off on the deity less precious victims than living men and women. This interpretation is supported by the undoubted cases in which animals have been substituted for human victims.[133 - See The Dying God, p. 166 note 1, and below, p. 249 (#x_22_i21).] On the whole we may conclude that neither the polished manners of a later age, nor the glamour which Greek poetry and art threw over the figure of Dionysus, sufficed to conceal or erase the deep lines of savagery and cruelty imprinted on the features of this barbarous deity.

Chapter II. Demeter And Persephone

Demeter and Persephone as Greek personifications of the decay and revival of vegetation.

Dionysus was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual appear to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another form and with a different application the old tale reappears in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Substantially their myth is identical with the Syrian one of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian one of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian one of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one, who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in winter to revive in spring; only whereas the Oriental imagination figured the loved and lost one as a dead lover or a dead husband lamented by his leman or his wife, Greek fancy embodied the same idea in the tenderer and purer form of a dead daughter bewailed by her sorrowing mother.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The rape of Persephone. The wrath of Demeter. The return of Persephone.

The oldest literary document which narrates the myth of Demeter and Persephone is the beautiful Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which critics assign to the seventh century before our era.[134 - R. Foerster, Der Raub und die Rückkehr der Persephone (Stuttgart, 1874), pp. 37-39; The Homeric Hymns, edited by T. W. Allen and E. E. Sikes (London, 1904), pp. 10 sq. A later date – the age of the Pisistratids – is assigned to the hymn by A. Baumeister (Hymni Homerici, Leipsic, 1860, p. 280).] The object of the poem is to explain the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, and the complete silence of the poet as to Athens and the Athenians, who in after ages took a conspicuous part in the festival, renders it probable that the hymn was composed in the far off time when Eleusis was still a petty independent state, and before the stately procession of the Mysteries had begun to defile, in bright September days, over the low chain of barren rocky hills which divides the flat Eleusinian cornland from the more spacious olive-clad expanse of the Athenian plain. Be that as it may, the hymn reveals to us the conception which the writer entertained of the character and functions of the two goddesses: their natural shapes stand out sharply enough under the thin veil of poetical imagery. The youthful Persephone, so runs the tale, was gathering roses and lilies, crocuses and violets, hyacinths and narcissuses in a lush meadow, when the earth gaped and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss carried her off on his golden car to be his bride and queen in the gloomy subterranean world. Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with her yellow tresses veiled in a dark mourning mantle, sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter's fate she withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods and took up her abode at Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters in the guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive tree beside the Maiden's Well, to which the damsels had come to draw water in bronze pitchers for their father's house. In her wrath at her bereavement the goddess suffered not the seed to grow in the earth but kept it hidden under ground, and she vowed that never would she set foot on Olympus and never would she let the corn sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her. Vainly the oxen dragged the ploughs to and fro in the fields; vainly the sower dropped the barley seed in the brown furrows; nothing came up from the parched and crumbling soil. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis, which was wont to wave with yellow harvests, lay bare and fallow.[135 - Hymn to Demeter, 1 sqq., 302 sqq., 330 sqq., 349 sqq., 414 sqq., 450 sqq.] Mankind would have perished of hunger and the gods would have been robbed of the sacrifices which were their due, if Zeus in alarm had not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore his bride Persephone to her mother Demeter. The grim lord of the Dead smiled and obeyed, but before he sent back his queen to the upper air on a golden car, he gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, which ensured that she would return to him. But Zeus stipulated that henceforth Persephone should spend two thirds of every year with her mother and the gods in the upper world and one third of the year with her husband in the nether world, from which she was to return year by year when the earth was gay with spring flowers. Gladly the daughter then returned to the sunshine, gladly her mother received her and fell upon her neck; and in her joy at recovering the lost one Demeter made the corn to sprout from the clods of the ploughed fields and all the broad earth to be heavy with leaves and blossoms. And straightway she went and shewed this happy sight to the princes of Eleusis, to Triptolemus, Eumolpus, Diocles, and to the king Celeus himself, and moreover she revealed to them her sacred rites and mysteries. Blessed, says the poet, is the mortal man who has seen these things, but he who has had no share of them in life will never be happy in death when he has descended into the darkness of the grave. So the two goddesses departed to dwell in bliss with the gods on Olympus; and the bard ends the hymn with a pious prayer to Demeter and Persephone that they would be pleased to grant him a livelihood in return for his song.[136 - Hymn to Demeter, 310 sqq. With the myth as set forth in the Homeric hymn may be compared the accounts of Apollodorus (Bibliotheca, i. 5) and Ovid (Fasti, iv. 425-618; Metamorphoses, v. 385 sqq.).]

The aim of the Homeric Hymn to Demeteris to explain the traditional foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries by Demeter.

It has been generally recognised, and indeed it seems scarcely open to doubt, that the main theme which the poet set before himself in composing this hymn was to describe the traditional foundation of the Eleusinian mysteries by the goddess Demeter. The whole poem leads up to the transformation scene in which the bare leafless expanse of the Eleusinian plain is suddenly turned, at the will of the goddess, into a vast sheet of ruddy corn; the beneficent deity takes the princes of Eleusis, shews them what she has done, teaches them her mystic rites, and vanishes with her daughter to heaven. The revelation of the mysteries is the triumphal close of the piece. This conclusion is confirmed by a more minute examination of the poem, which proves that the poet has given, not merely a general account of the foundation of the mysteries, but also in more or less veiled language mythical explanations of the origin of particular rites which we have good reason to believe formed essential features of the festival. Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.[137 - Hymn to Demeter, 47-50, 191-211, 292-295, with the notes of Messrs. Allen and Sikes in their edition of the Homeric Hymns (London, 1904). As to representations of the candidates for initiation seated on stools draped with sheepskins, see L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 237 sqq., with plate xv a. On a well-known marble vase there figured the stool is covered with a lion's skin and one of the candidate's feet rests on a ram's skull or horns; but in two other examples of the same scene the ram's fleece is placed on the seat (Farnell, op. cit. p. 240 note a), just as it is said to have been placed on Demeter's stool in the Homeric hymn. As to the form of communion in the Eleusinian mysteries, see Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. 21, p. 18 ed. Potter; Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 26; L. R. Farnell, op. cit. iii. 185 sq., 195 sq. For discussions of the ancient evidence bearing on the Eleusinian mysteries it may suffice to refer to Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829), pp. 3 sqq.; G. F. Schoemann, Griechische Alterthümer,

ii. 387 sqq.; Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp. 222 sqq.; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 204 sqq.; P. Foucart, Recherches sur l'Origine et la Nature des Mystères d'Eleusis (Paris, 1895) (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxxv.); id., Les grands Mystères d'Eleusis (Paris, 1900) (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxxvii.); F. Lenormant and E. Pottier, s. v. “Eleusinia,” in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, ii. 544 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 126 sqq.]

Revelation of a reaped ear of corn the crowning act of the mysteries.

But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries which the author of the poem appears to have divulged under cover of his narrative. He tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the barren brown expanse of the Eleusinian plain into a field of golden grain, she gladdened the eyes of Triptolemus and the other Eleusinian princes by shewing them the growing or standing corn. When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a Christian writer of the second century, Hippolytus, that the very heart of the mysteries consisted in shewing to the initiated a reaped ear of corn,[138 - Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, v. 8, p. 162, ed. L. Duncker et F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859). The word which the poet uses to express the revelation (δεῖξε, Hymn to Demeter, verse 474) is a technical one in the mysteries; the full phrase was δεικνύναι τὰ ἱερά. See Plutarch, Alcibiades, 22; Xenophon, Hellenica, vi. 3. 6; Isocrates, Panegyricus, 6; Lysias, Contra Andocidem, 51; Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 51.] we can hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn was well acquainted with this solemn rite, and that he deliberately intended to explain its origin in precisely the same way as he explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her own person. Thus myth and ritual mutually explain and confirm each other. The poet of the seventh century before our era gives us the myth – he could not without sacrilege have revealed the ritual: the Christian father reveals the ritual, and his revelation accords perfectly with the veiled hint of the old poet. On the whole, then, we may, with many modern scholars, confidently accept the statement of the learned Christian father Clement of Alexandria, that the myth of Demeter and Persephone was acted as a sacred drama in the mysteries of Eleusis.[139 - Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 12, p. 12 ed. Potter: Δηὼ δὲ καὶ Κόρη δρᾶμα ἤδη ἐγενέσθην μυστικόν; καὶ τὴν πλάνην καὶ τὴν ἀρπαγὴν καὶ τὸ πένθος αὐταῖν Ἐλευσὶς δᾳδουχεῖ. Compare F. Lenormant, s. v. “Eleusinia,” in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines iii. 578: “Que le drame mystique des aventures de Déméter et de Coré constituât le spectacle essentiel de l'initiation, c'est ce dont il nous semble impossible de douter.” A similar view is expressed by G. F. Schoemann (Griechische Alterthümer,4 ii. 402); Preller-Robert (Griechische Mythologie, i. 793); P. Foucart (Recherches sur l'Origine et la Nature des Mystères d'Eleusis, Paris, 1895, pp. 43 sqq.; id., Les Grands Mystères d'Eleusis, Paris, 1900, p. 137); E. Rohde (Psyche,3 i. 289); and L. R. Farnell (The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 134, 173 sqq.).]

Demeter and Persephone personifications of the corn. Persephone the seed sown in autumn and sprouting in spring. Demeter the old corn of last year. The view that Demeter was the Earth goddess is implicitly rejected by the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

But if the myth was acted as a part, perhaps as the principal part, of the most famous and solemn religious rites of ancient Greece, we have still to enquire, What was, after all, stripped of later accretions, the original kernel of the myth which appears to later ages surrounded and transfigured by an aureole of awe and mystery, lit up by some of the most brilliant rays of Grecian literature and art? If we follow the indications given by our oldest literary authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses, the mother and the daughter, resolve themselves into personifications of the corn.[140 - On Demeter and Proserpine as goddesses of the corn, see L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone (Hamburg, 1837), pp. 315 sqq.; and especially W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen (Strasburg, 1884), pp. 202 sqq.] At least this appears to be fairly certain for the daughter Persephone. The goddess who spends three or, according to another version of the myth, six months of every year with the dead under ground and the remainder of the year with the living above ground;[141 - According to the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (verses 398 sqq., 445 sqq.) and Apollodorus (Bibliotheca, i. 5. 3) the time which Persephone had to spend under ground was one third of the year; according to Ovid (Fasti, iv. 613 sq.; Metamorphoses, v. 564 sqq.) and Hyginus (Fabulae, 146) it was one half.] in whose absence the barley seed is hidden in the earth and the fields lie bare and fallow; on whose return in spring to the upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the earth is heavy with leaves and blossoms – this goddess can surely be nothing else than a mythical embodiment of the vegetation, and particularly of the corn, which is buried under the soil for some months of every winter and comes to life again, as from the grave, in the sprouting cornstalks and the opening flowers and foliage of every spring. No other reasonable and probable explanation of Persephone seems possible.[142 - This view of the myth of Persephone is, for example, accepted and clearly stated by L. Preller (Demeter und Persephone, pp. 128 sq.).] And if the daughter goddess was a personification of the young corn of the present year, may not the mother goddess be a personification of the old corn of last year, which has given birth to the new crops? The only alternative to this view of Demeter would seem to be to suppose that she is a personification of the earth, from whose broad bosom the corn and all other plants spring up, and of which accordingly they may appropriately enough be regarded as the daughters. This view of the original nature of Demeter has indeed been taken by some writers, both ancient and modern,[143 - See, for example, Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 17. 3: “Frugum substantiam volunt Proserpinam dicere, quia fruges hominibus cum seri coeperint prosunt. Terram ipsam Cererem nominant, nomen hoc a gerendis fructibus mutuati”; L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone, p. 128, “Der Erdboden wird Demeter, die Vegetation Persephone.” François Lenormant, again, held that Demeter was originally a personification of the earth regarded as divine, but he admitted that from the time of the Homeric poems downwards she was sharply distinguished from Ge, the earth-goddess proper. See Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, s. v. “Ceres,” ii. 1022 sq. Some light might be thrown on the question whether Demeter was an Earth Goddess or a Corn Goddess, if we could be sure of the etymology of her name, which has been variously explained as “Earth Mother” (Δῆ μήτηρ equivalent to Γῆ μήτηρ) and as “Barley Mother” (from an alleged Cretan word δηαί “barley”: see Etymologicum Magnum, s. v. Δηώ, pp. 263 sq.). The former etymology has been the most popular; the latter is maintained by W. Mannhardt. See L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone, pp. 317, 366 sqq.; F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, i. 385 sqq.; Preller-Robert, Griechische Mythologie, i. 747 note 6; Kern, in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iv. 2713; W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 281 sqq. But my learned friend the Rev. Professor J. H. Moulton informs me that both etymologies are open to serious philological objections, and that no satisfactory derivation of the first syllable of Demeter's name has yet been proposed. Accordingly I prefer to base no argument on an analysis of the name, and to rest my interpretation of the goddess entirely on her myth, ritual, and representations in art. Etymology is at the best a very slippery ground on which to rear mythological theories.] and it is one which can be reasonably maintained. But it appears to have been rejected by the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, for he not only distinguishes Demeter from the personified Earth but places the two in the sharpest opposition to each other. He tells us that it was Earth who, in accordance with the will of Zeus and to please Pluto, lured Persephone to her doom by causing the narcissuses to grow which tempted the young goddess to stray far beyond the reach of help in the lush meadow.[144 - Hymn to Demeter, 8 sqq.] Thus Demeter of the hymn, far from being identical with the Earth-goddess, must have regarded that divinity as her worst enemy, since it was to her insidious wiles that she owed the loss of her daughter. But if the Demeter of the hymn cannot have been a personification of the earth, the only alternative apparently is to conclude that she was a personification of the corn.

The Yellow Demeter, the goddess who sifts the ripe grain from the chaff at the threshing-floor. The Green Demeter the goddess of the green corn.

With this conclusion all the indications of the hymn-writer seem to harmonise. He certainly represents Demeter as the goddess by whose power and at whose pleasure the corn either grows or remains hidden in the ground; and to what deity can such powers be so fittingly ascribed as to the goddess of the corn? He calls Demeter yellow and tells how her yellow tresses flowed down on her shoulders;[145 - Hymn to Demeter, 279, 302.] could any colour be more appropriate with which to paint the divinity of the yellow grain? The same identification of Demeter with the ripe, the yellow corn is made even more clearly by a still older poet, Homer himself, or at all events the author of the fifth book of the Iliad. There we read: “And even as the wind carries the chaff about the sacred threshing-floors, when men are winnowing, what time yellow Demeter sifts the corn from the chaff on the hurrying blast, so that the heaps of chaff grow white below, so were the Achaeans whitened above by the cloud of dust which the hoofs of the horses spurned to the brazen heaven.”[146 - Homer, Iliad, v. 499-504.] Here the yellow Demeter who sifts the grain from the chaff at the threshing-floor can hardly be any other than the goddess of the yellow corn; she cannot be the Earth-goddess, for what has the Earth-goddess to do with the grain and the chaff blown about a threshing-floor? With this interpretation it agrees that elsewhere Homer speaks of men eating “Demeter's corn”;[147 - Iliad, xiii. 322, xxi. 76.] and still more definitely Hesiod speaks of “the annual store of food, which the earth bears, Demeter's corn,”[148 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 31 sq.] thus distinguishing the goddess of the corn from the earth which bears it. Still more clearly does a later Greek poet personify the corn as Demeter when, in allusion to the time of the corn-reaping, he says that then “the sturdy swains cleave Demeter limb from limb.”[149 - Quoted by Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 66.] And just as the ripe or yellow corn was personified as the Yellow Demeter, so the unripe or green corn was personified as the Green Demeter. In that character the goddess had sanctuaries at Athens and other places; sacrifices were appropriately offered to Green Demeter in spring when the earth was growing green with the fresh vegetation, and the victims included sows big with young,[150 - Pausanias, i. 22. 3 with my note; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 615; J. de Prott et L. Ziehen, Leges Graecorum Sacrae, Fasciculus I. (Leipsic, 1896) p. 49; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28; Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Colon. 1600; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 312 sq.] which no doubt were intended not merely to symbolise but magically to promote the abundance of the crops.