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

The cereals called “Demeter's fruits.”

In Greek the various kinds of corn were called by the general name of “Demeter's fruits,”[151 - Herodotus, i. 193, iv. 198; Xenophon, Hellenica, vi. 3. 6; Aelian, Historia Animalium, xvii. 16; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28; Geoponica, i. 12. 36; Paroemiographi Graeci, ed. Leutsch et Schneidewin, Appendix iv. 20 (vol. i. p. 439).] just as in Latin they were called the “fruits or gifts of Ceres,”[152 - Cerealia in Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxiii. 1; Cerealia munera and Cerealia dona in Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi. 121 sq.] an expression which survives in the English word cereals. Tradition ran that before Demeter's time men neither cultivated corn nor tilled the ground, but roamed the mountains and woods in search of the wild fruits which the earth produced spontaneously from her womb for their subsistence. The tradition clearly implies not only that Demeter was the goddess of the corn, but that she was different from and younger than the goddess of the Earth, since it is expressly affirmed that before Demeter's time the earth existed and supplied mankind with nourishment in the shape of wild herbs, grasses, flowers and fruits.[153 - Libanius, ed. J. J. Reiske, vol. iv. p. 367, Corinth. Oratio: Οὐκ αὖθις ἡμῶν ακαρποσ ἡ γῆ δοκεῖ γεγονέναι? οὐ πάλιν ὁ πρὸ Δήμητρος εἶναι βίος? καί τοι καὶ πρὸ Δήμητρος αἱ γεωργίαι μὲν οὐκ ἦσαν; οὐδὲ ἄροτοι, αὐτόφυτοι δὲ βοτάναι καὶ πόαι; καὶ πολλὰ εἶχεν εἰς σωτηρίαν ἀνθρώπων αὐτοσχέδια ἄνθη ἡ γῆ ὠδίνουσα καὶ κύουσα πρὸ τῶν ἡμέρων τὰ ἄγρια. Ἐπλανῶντο μὲν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλους; ἄλση καὶ ὄρη περιῄσαν, ζητοῦντες αὐτόματον τροφήν. In this passage, which no doubt represents the common Greek view on the subject, the earth is plainly personified (ὠδίνουσα καὶ κύουσα), which points the antithesis between her and the goddess of the corn. Diodorus Siculus also says (v. 68) that corn grew wild with the other plants before Demeter taught men to cultivate it and to sow the seed.]

Corn and poppies as symbols of Demeter.

In ancient art Demeter and Persephone are characterised as goddesses of the corn by the crowns of corn which they wear on their heads and by the stalks of corn which they hold in their hands.[154 - Ovid, Fasti, iv. 616; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 11. 5; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28; Anthologia Palatina, vi. 104. 8; W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, p. 235; J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1878) pp. 420, 421, 453, 479, 480, 502, 505, 507, 514, 522, 523, 524, 525 sq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 217 sqq., 220 sq., 222, 226, 232, 233, 237, 260, 265, 268, 269 sq., 271.] Theocritus describes a smiling image of Demeter standing by a heap of yellow grain on a threshing-floor and grasping sheaves of barley and poppies in both her hands.[155 - Theocritus, Idyl. vii. 155 sqq. That the sheaves which the goddess grasped were of barley is proved by verses 31-34 of the poem.] Indeed corn and poppies singly or together were a frequent symbol of the goddess, as we learn not only from the testimony of ancient writers[156 - Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 11. 5; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, p. 56, ed. C. Lang; Virgil, Georg. i. 212, with the comment of Servius.] but from many existing monuments of classical art.[157 - See the references to the works of Overbeck and Farnell above. For example, a fine statue at Copenhagen, in the style of the age of Phidias, represents Demeter holding poppies and ears of corn in her left hand. See Farnell, op. cit. iii. 268, with plate xxviii.] The naturalness of the symbol can be doubted by no one who has seen – and who has not seen? – a field of yellow corn bespangled thick with scarlet poppies; and we need not resort to the shifts of an ancient mythologist, who explained the symbolism of the poppy in Demeter's hand by comparing the globular shape of the poppy to the roundness of our globe, the unevenness of its edges to hills and valleys, and the hollow interior of the scarlet flower to the caves and dens of the earth.[158 - Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, p. 56 ed. C. Lang.] If only students would study the little black and white books of men less and the great rainbow-tinted book of nature more; if they would more frequently exchange the heavy air and the dim light of libraries for the freshness and the sunshine of the open sky; if they would oftener unbend their minds by rural walks between fields of waving corn, beside rivers rippling by under grey willows, or down green lanes, where the hedges are white with the hawthorn bloom or red with wild roses, they might sometimes learn more about primitive religion than can be gathered from many dusty volumes, in which wire-drawn theories are set forth with all the tedious parade of learning.

Persephone portrayed as the young corn sprouting from the ground.

Nowhere, perhaps, in the monuments of Greek art is the character of Persephone as a personification of the young corn sprouting in spring portrayed more gracefully and more truly than on a coin of Lampsacus of the fourth century before our era. On it we see the goddess in the very act of rising from the earth. “Her face is upraised; in her hand are three ears of corn, and others together with grapes are springing behind her shoulder. Complete is here the identification of the goddess and her attribute: she is embowered amid the ears of growing corn, and like it half buried in the ground. She does not make the corn and vine grow, but she is the corn and vine growing, and returning again to the face of the earth after lying hidden in its depths. Certainly the artist who designed this beautiful figure thoroughly understood Hellenic religion.”[159 - Percy Gardner, Types of Greek Coins (Cambridge, 1883), p. 174, with plate x. No. 25.]

Demeter invoked and propitiated by Greek farmers before the autumnal sowing. Boeotian festival of mourning for the descent of Persephone at the autumnal sowing.

As the goddess who first bestowed corn on mankind and taught them to sow and cultivate it,[160 - Diodorus Siculus, v. 68. 1.] Demeter was naturally invoked and propitiated by farmers before they undertook the various operations of the agricultural year. In autumn, when he heard the sonorous trumpeting of the cranes, as they winged their way southward in vast flocks high overhead, the Greek husbandman knew that the rains were near and that the time of ploughing was at hand; but before he put his hand to the plough he prayed to Underground Zeus and to Holy Demeter for a heavy crop of Demeter's sacred corn. Then he guided the ox-drawn plough down the field, turning up the brown earth with the share, while a swain followed close behind with a hoe, who covered up the seed as fast as it fell to protect it from the voracious birds that fluttered and twittered at the plough-tail.[161 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 448-474; Epictetus, Dissertationes, iii. 21. 12. For the autumnal migration and clangour of the cranes as the signal for sowing, see Aristophanes, Birds, 711; compare Theognis, 1197 sqq. But the Greeks also ploughed in spring (Hesiod, op. cit. 462; Xenophon, Oeconom. 16); indeed they ploughed thrice in the year (Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, vii. 13. 6). At the approach of autumn the cranes of northern Europe collect about rivers and lakes, and after much trumpeting set out in enormous bands on their southward journey to the tropical regions of Africa and India. In early spring they return northward, and their flocks may be descried passing at a marvellous height overhead or halting to rest in the meadows beside some broad river. The bird emits its trumpet-like note both on the ground and on the wing. See Alfred Newton, Dictionary of Birds (London, 1893-1896), pp. 110 sq.] But while the ordinary Greek farmer took the signal for ploughing from the clangour of the cranes, Hesiod and other writers who aimed at greater exactness laid it down as a rule that the ploughing should begin with the autumnal setting of the Pleiades in the morning, which in Hesiod's time fell on the twenty-sixth of October.[162 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 383 sq., 615-617; Aratus, Phaenomena, 254-267; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 241 sq. According to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xviii. 49) wheat, barley, and all other cereals were sown in Greece and Asia from the time of the autumn setting of the Pleiades. This date for ploughing and sowing is confirmed by Hippocrates and other medical writers. See W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,

i. 234. Latin writers prescribe the same date for the sowing of wheat. See Virgil, Georg. i. 219-226; Columella, De re rustica, ii. 8; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 223-226. In Columella's time the Pleiades, he tells us (l. c.), set in the morning of October 24th of the Julian calendar, which would correspond to the October 16th of our reckoning.] The month in which the Pleiades set in the morning was generally recognised by the Greeks as the month of sowing; it corresponded apparently in part to our October, in part to our November. The Athenians called it Pyanepsion; the Boeotians named it significantly Damatrius, that is, Demeter's month, and they celebrated a feast of mourning because, says Plutarch, who as a Boeotian speaks with authority on such a matter, Demeter was then in mourning for the descent of Persephone.[163 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 69.] Is it possible to express more clearly the true original nature of Persephone as the corn-seed which has just been buried in the earth? The obvious, the almost inevitable conclusion did not escape Plutarch. He tells us that the mournful rites which were held at the time of the autumn sowing nominally commemorated the actions of deities, but that the real sadness was for the fruits of the earth, some of which at that season dropped of themselves and vanished from the trees, while others in the shape of seed were committed with anxious thoughts to the ground by men, who scraped the earth and then huddled it up over the seed, just as if they were burying and mourning for the dead.[164 - Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 70. Similarly Cornutus says that “Hades is fabled to have carried off Demeter's daughter because the seed vanishes for a time under the earth,” and he mentions that a festival of Demeter was celebrated at the time of sowing (Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, pp. 54, 55 ed. C. Lang). In a fragment of a Greek calendar which is preserved in the Louvre “the ascent (ἀναβάσις) of the goddess” is dated the seventh day of the month Dius, and “the descent or setting (δύσις) of the goddess” is dated the fourth day of the month Hephaestius, a month which seems to be otherwise unknown. See W. Froehner, Musée Nationale du Louvre, Les Inscriptions Grecques (Paris, 1880), pp. 50 sq. Greek inscriptions found at Mantinea refer to a worship of Demeter and Persephone, who are known to have had a sanctuary there (Pausanias, viii. 9. 2). The people of Mantinea celebrated “mysteries of the goddess” and a festival called the koragia, which seems to have represented the return of Persephone from the lower world. See W. Immerwahr, Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens (Leipsic, 1891), pp. 100 sq.; S. Reinach, Traité d'Epigraphie Grecque (Paris, 1885), pp. 141 sqq.; Hesychius, s. v. κοράγειν.] Surely this interpretation of the custom and of the myth of Persephone is not only beautiful but true.

Thank-offerings of ripe grain presented by Greek farmers to Demeter after the harvest. Theocritus's description of a harvest-home in Cos.

And just as the Greek husbandman prayed to the Corn Goddess when he committed the seed, with anxious forebodings, to the furrows, so after he had reaped the harvest and brought back the yellow sheaves with rejoicing to the threshing-floor, he paid the bountiful goddess her dues in the form of a thank-offering of golden grain. Theocritus has painted for us in glowing colours a picture of a rustic harvest-home, as it fell on a bright autumn day some two thousand years ago in the little Greek island of Cos.[165 - Theocritus, Idyl. vii.] The poet tells us how he went with two friends from the city to attend a festival given by farmers, who were offering first-fruits to Demeter from the store of barley with which she had filled their barns. The day was warm, indeed so hot that the very lizards, which love to bask and run about in the sun, were slumbering in the crevices of the stone-walls, and not a lark soared carolling into the blue vault of heaven. Yet despite the great heat there were everywhere signs of autumn. “All things,” says the poet, “smelt of summer, but smelt of autumn too.” Indeed the day was really autumnal; for a goat-herd who met the friends on their way to the rural merry-making, asked them whether they were bound for the treading of the grapes in the wine-presses. And when they had reached their destination and reclined at ease in the dappled shade of over-arching poplars and elms, with the babble of a neighbouring fountain, the buzz of the cicadas, the hum of bees, and the cooing of doves in their ears, the ripe apples and pears rolled in the grass at their feet and the branches of the wild-plum trees were bowed down to the earth with the weight of their purple fruit. So couched on soft beds of fragrant lentisk they passed the sultry hours singing ditties alternately, while a rustic image of Demeter, to whom the honours of the day were paid, stood smiling beside a heap of yellow grain on the threshing-floor, with corn-stalks and poppies in her hands.

The harvest-home described by Theocritus fell in autumn.

In this description the time of year when the harvest-home was celebrated is clearly marked. Apart from the mention of the ripe apples, pears, and plums, the reference to the treading of the grapes is decisive. The Greeks gather and press the grapes in the first half of October,[166 - In ancient Greece the vintage seems to have fallen somewhat earlier; for Hesiod bids the husbandman gather the ripe clusters at the time when Arcturus is a morning star, which in the poet's age was on the 18th of September. See Hesiod, Works and Days, 609 sqq.; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 247.] and accordingly it is to this date that the harvest-festival described by Theocritus must be assigned. At the present day in Greece the maize-harvest immediately precedes the vintage, the grain being reaped and garnered at the end of September. Travelling in rural districts of Argolis and Arcadia at that time of the year you pass from time to time piles of the orange-coloured cobs laid up ready to be shelled, or again heaps of the yellow grain beside the pods. But maize was unknown to the ancient Greeks, who, like their modern descendants, reaped their wheat and barley crops much earlier in the summer, usually from the end of April till June.[167 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 190 note 2.] However, we may conclude that the day immortalised by Theocritus was one of those autumn days of great heat and effulgent beauty which in Greece may occur at any time up to the very verge of winter. I remember such a day at Panopeus on the borders of Phocis and Boeotia. It was the first of November, yet the sun shone in cloudless splendour and the heat was so great, that when I had examined the magnificent remains of ancient Greek fortification-walls which crown the summit of the hill, it was delicious to repose on a grassy slope in the shade of some fine holly-oaks and to inhale the sweet scent of the wild thyme, which perfumed all the air. But it was summer's farewell. Next morning the weather had completely changed. A grey November sky lowered sadly overhead, and grey mists hung like winding-sheets on the lower slopes of the barren mountains which shut in the fatal plain of Chaeronea.

The Greeks seem to have deferred the offering of first-fruits till the autumn in order to propitiate the Corn Goddess at the moment of ploughing and sowing, when her help was urgently needed.

Thus we may infer that in the rural districts of ancient Greece farmers offered their first-fruits of the barley harvest to Demeter in autumn about the time when the grapes were being trodden in the wine-presses and the ripe apples and pears littered the ground in the orchards. At first sight the lateness of the festival in the year is surprising; for in the lowlands of Greece at the present day barley is reaped at the end of April and wheat in May,[168 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, p. 190 note 2.] and in antiquity the time of harvest would seem not to have been very different, for Hesiod bids the husbandman put the sickle to the corn at the morning rising of the Pleiades,[169 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 383 sq.] which in his time took place on the eleventh of May.[170 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 242.] But if the harvest was reaped in spring or early summer, why defer the offerings of corn to the Corn Goddess until the middle of autumn? The reason for the delay is not, so far as I am aware, explained by any ancient author, and accordingly it must remain for us a matter of conjecture. I surmise that the reason may have been a calculation on the part of the practical farmer that the best time to propitiate the Corn Goddess was not after harvest, when he had got all that was to be got out of her, but immediately before ploughing and sowing, when he had everything to hope from her good-will and everything to fear from her displeasure. When he had reaped his corn, and the sheaves had been safely garnered in his barns, he might, so to say, snap his fingers at the Corn Goddess. What could she do for him on the bare stubble-field which lay scorched and baking under the fierce rays of the sun all the long rainless summer through? But matters wore a very different aspect when, with the shortening and cooling of the days, he began to scan the sky for clouds[171 - Compare Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 17, ἐπειδὰν γὰρ ὁ μετοπωρινὸς χρόνος ἔλθῃ, πάντες που οἱ ἄνθρωποι πρὸς τὸν θέον ἀποβλέπουσιν, ὅποτε βρέξας τὴν γῆν ἀφήσει αὐτοὺς σπείρειν.] and to listen for the cries of the cranes as they flew southward, heralding by their trumpet-like notes the approach of the autumnal rains. Then he knew that the time had come to break up the ground that it might receive the seed and be fertilised by the refreshing water of heaven; then he bethought him of the Corn Goddess once more and brought forth from the grange a share of the harvested corn with which to woo her favour and induce her to quicken the grain which he was about to commit to the earth. On this theory the Greek offering of first-fruits was prompted not so much by gratitude for past favours as by a shrewd eye to favours to come, and perhaps this interpretation of the custom does no serious injustice to the cool phlegmatic temper of the bucolic mind, which is more apt to be moved by considerations of profit than by sentiment. At all events the reasons suggested for delaying the harvest-festival accord perfectly with the natural conditions and seasons of farming in Greece. For in that country the summer is practically rainless, and during the long months of heat and drought the cultivation of the two ancient cereals, barley and wheat, is at a standstill. The first rains of autumn fall about the middle of October,[172 - August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, p. 193.] and that was the Greek farmer's great time for ploughing and sowing.[173 - See above, pp. 44 (#x_8_i17)sqq.] Hence we should expect him to make his offering of first-fruits to the Corn Goddess shortly before he ploughed and sowed, and this expectation is entirely confirmed by the date which we have inferred for the offering from the evidence of Theocritus. Thus the sacrifice of barley to Demeter in the autumn would seem to have been not so much a thank-offering as a bribe judiciously administered to her at the very moment of all the year when her services were most urgently wanted.

The festival of the Proerosia(“Before the Ploughing”) held at Eleusis in honour of Demeter.

When with the progress of civilisation a number of petty agricultural communities have merged into a single state dependent for its subsistence mainly on the cultivation of the ground, it commonly happens that, though every farmer continues to perform for himself the simple old rites designed to ensure the blessing of the gods on his crops, the government undertakes to celebrate similar, though more stately and elaborate, rites on behalf of the whole people, lest the neglect of public worship should draw down on the country the wrath of the offended deities. Hence it comes about that, for all their pomp and splendour, the national festivals of such states are often merely magnified and embellished copies of homely rites and uncouth observances carried out by rustics in the open fields, in barns, and on threshing-floors. In ancient Egypt the religion of Isis and Osiris furnishes examples of solemnities which have been thus raised from the humble rank of rural festivities to the dignity of national celebrations;[174 - See Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition, pp. 283 sqq.] and in ancient Greece a like development may be traced in the religion of Demeter. If the Greek ploughman prayed to Demeter and Underground Zeus for a good crop before he put his hand to the plough in autumn, the authorities of the Athenian state celebrated about the same time and for the same purpose a public festival in honour of Demeter at Eleusis. It was called the Proerosia, which signifies “Before the Ploughing”; and as the festival was dedicated to her, Demeter herself bore the name of Proerosia. Tradition ran that once on a time the whole world was desolated by a famine, and that to remedy the evil the Pythian oracle bade the Athenians offer the sacrifice of the Proerosia on behalf of all men. They did so, and the famine ceased accordingly. Hence to testify their gratitude for the deliverance people sent the first-fruits of their harvest from all quarters to Athens.[175 - Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights, 720; Suidas, s. vv. εἰρεσιώνη and προηροσίαι; Etymologicum Magnum, Hesychius, and Photius, Lexicon, s. v. προηρόσια; Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium, 15; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 521, line 29, and No. 628; Aug. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192 sqq. The inscriptions prove that the Proerosia was held at Eleusis and that it was distinct from the Great Mysteries, being mentioned separately from them. Some of the ancients accounted for the origin of the festival by a universal plague instead of a universal famine. But this version of the story no doubt arose from the common confusion between the similar Greek words for plague and famine (λοιμός and λιμός). That in the original version famine and not plague must have been alleged as the reason for instituting the Proerosia, appears plainly from the reference of the name to ploughing, from the dedication of the festival to Demeter, and from the offerings of first-fruits; for these circumstances, though quite appropriate to ceremonies designed to stay or avert dearth and famine, would be quite inappropriate in the case of a plague.]

The Proerosiaseems to have been held before the ploughing in October but after the Great Mysteries in September. However, the date of the Great Mysteries, being determined by the lunar calendar, must have fluctuated in the solar year; whereas the date of the Proerosia, being determined by observation of Arcturus, must have been fixed.

But the exact date at which the Proerosia or Festival before Ploughing took place is somewhat uncertain, and enquirers are divided in opinion as to whether it fell before or after the Great Mysteries, which began on the fifteenth or sixteenth of Boedromion, a month corresponding roughly to our September. Another name for the festival was Proarcturia, that is, “Before Arcturus,”[176 - Hesychius, s. v. προηρόσια.] which points to a date either before the middle of September, when Arcturus is a morning star, or before the end of October, when Arcturus is an evening star.[177 - August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, p. 194.] In favour of the earlier date it may be said, first, that the morning phase of Arcturus was well known and much observed, because it marked the middle of autumn, whereas little use was made of the evening phase of Arcturus for the purpose of dating;[178 - August Mommsen, l. c.] and, second, that in an official Athenian inscription the Festival before Ploughing (Proerosia) is mentioned immediately before the Great Mysteries.[179 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 521, lines 29 sqq.] On the other hand, in favour of the later date, it may be said that as the autumnal rains in Greece set in about the middle of October, the latter part of that month would be a more suitable time for a ceremony at the opening of ploughing than the middle of September, when the soil is still parched with the summer drought; and, second, that this date is confirmed by a Greek inscription of the fourth or third century b. c., found at Eleusis, in which the Festival before Ploughing is apparently mentioned in the month of Pyanepsion immediately before the festival of the Pyanepsia, which was held on the seventh day of that month.[180 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 628.] It is difficult to decide between these conflicting arguments, but on the whole I incline, not without hesitation, to agree with some eminent modern authorities in placing the Festival before Ploughing in Pyanepsion (October) after the Mysteries, rather than in Boedromion (September) before the Mysteries.[181 - The view that the Festival before Ploughing (Proerosia) fell in Pyanepsion is accepted by W. Mannhardt and W. Dittenberger. See W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), pp. 238 sq.; id., Mythologische Forschungen, p. 258; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

note 2 on Inscr. No. 628 (vol. ii. pp. 423 sq.). The view that the Festival before Ploughing fell in Boedromion is maintained by August Mommsen. See his Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), pp. 218 sqq.; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192 sqq.] However, we must bear in mind that as the Attic months, like the Greek months generally, were lunar,[182 - See below, p. 82 (#x_10_i13).] their position in the solar year necessarily varied from year to year, and though these variations were periodically corrected by intercalation, nevertheless the beginning of each Attic month sometimes diverged by several weeks from the beginning of the corresponding month to which we equate it.[183 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 292 sq.; compare August Mommsen, Chronologie (Leipsic, 1883), pp. 58 sq.] From this it follows that the Great Mysteries, which were always dated by the calendar month, must have annually shifted their place somewhat in the solar year; whereas the Festival before Ploughing, if it was indeed dated either by the morning or by the evening phase of Arcturus, must have occupied a fixed place in the solar year. Hence it appears to be not impossible that the Great Mysteries, oscillating to and fro with the inconstant moon, may sometimes have fallen before and sometimes after the Festival before Ploughing, which apparently always remained true to the constant star. At least this possibility, which seems to have been overlooked by previous enquirers, deserves to be taken into account. It is a corollary from the shifting dates of the lunar months that the official Greek calendar, in spite of its appearance of exactness, really furnished the ancient farmer with little trustworthy guidance as to the proper seasons for conducting the various operations of agriculture; and he was well advised in trusting to various natural timekeepers, such as the rising and setting of the constellations, the arrival and departure of the migratory birds, the flowering of certain plants,[184 - For example, Theophrastus notes that squills flowered thrice a year, and that each flowering marked the time for one of the three ploughings. See Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum, vii. 13. 6.] the ripening of fruits, and the setting in of the rains, rather than to the fallacious indications of the public calendar. It is by natural timekeepers, and not by calendar months, that Hesiod determines the seasons of the farmer's year in the poem which is the oldest existing treatise on husbandry.[185 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 383 sqq. The poet indeed refers (vv. 765 sqq.) to days of the month as proper times for engaging in certain tasks; but such references are always simply to days of the lunar month and apply equally to every month; they are never to days as dates in the solar year.]

Offerings of the first-fruits of the barley and wheat to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis. Isocrates on the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis.

Just as the ploughman's prayer to Demeter, before he drove the share through the clods of the field, was taken up and reverberated, so to say, with a great volume of sound in the public prayers which the Athenian state annually offered to the goddess before the ploughing on behalf of the whole world, so the simple first-fruits of barley, presented to the rustic Demeter under the dappled shade of rustling poplars and elms on the threshing-floor in Cos, were repeated year by year on a grander scale in the first-fruits of the barley and wheat harvest, which were presented to the Corn Mother and the Corn Maiden at Eleusis, not merely by every husbandman in Attica, but by all the allies and subjects of Athens far and near, and even by many free Greek communities beyond the sea. The reason why year by year these offerings of grain poured from far countries into the public granaries at Eleusis, was the widespread belief that the gift of corn had been first bestowed by Demeter on the Athenians and afterwards disseminated by them among all mankind through the agency of Triptolemus, who travelled over the world in his dragon-drawn car teaching all peoples to plough the earth and to sow the seed.[186 - See below, p. 72 (#x_10_i1).] In the fifth century before our era the legend was celebrated by Sophocles in a play called Triptolemus, in which he represented Demeter instructing the hero to carry the seed of the fruits which she had bestowed on men to all the coasts of Southern Italy,[187 - Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. i. 12. 2.] from which we may infer that the cities of Magna Graecia were among the number of those that sent the thank-offering of barley and wheat every year to Athens. Again, in the fourth century before our era Xenophon represents Callias, the braggart Eleusinian Torchbearer, addressing the Lacedaemonians in a set speech, in which he declared that “Our ancestor Triptolemus is said to have bestowed the seed of Demeter's corn on the Peloponese before any other land. How then,” he asked with pathetic earnestness, “can it be right that you should come to ravage the corn of the men from whom you received the seed?”[188 - Xenophon, Historia Graeca, vi. 3. 6.] Again, writing in the fourth century before our era Isocrates relates with a swell of patriotic pride how, in her search for her lost daughter Persephone, the goddess Demeter came to Attica and gave to the ancestors of the Athenians the two greatest of all gifts, the gift of the corn and the gift of the mysteries, of which the one reclaimed men from the life of beasts and the other held out hopes to them of a blissful eternity beyond the grave. The antiquity of the tradition, the orator proceeds to say, was no reason for rejecting it, but quite the contrary it furnished a strong argument in its favour, for what many affirmed and all had heard might be accepted as trustworthy. “And moreover,” he adds, “we are not driven to rest our case merely on the venerable age of the tradition; we can appeal to stronger evidence in its support. For most of the cities send us every year the first-fruits of the corn as a memorial of that ancient benefit, and when any of them have failed to do so the Pythian priestess has commanded them to send the due portions of the fruits and to act towards our city according to ancestral custom. Can anything be supported by stronger evidence than by the oracle of god, the assent of many Greeks, and the harmony of ancient legend with the deeds of to-day?”[189 - Isocrates, Panegyric, 6 sq.]

Athenian decree concerning the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis.

This testimony of Isocrates to the antiquity both of the legend and of the custom might perhaps have been set aside, or at least disparaged, as the empty bombast of a wordy rhetorician, if it had not happened by good chance to be amply confirmed by an official decree of the Athenian people passed in the century before Isocrates wrote. The decree was found inscribed on a stone at Eleusis and is dated by scholars in the latter half of the fifth century before our era, sometime between 446 and 420 b. c.[190 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 20 (vol. i. pp. 33 sqq.); E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, Part ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22 sqq.] It deals with the first-fruits of barley and wheat which were offered to the Two Goddesses, that is, to Demeter and Persephone, not only by the Athenians and their allies but by the Greeks in general. It prescribes the exact amount of barley and wheat which was to be offered by the Athenians and their allies, and it directs the highest officials at Eleusis, namely the Hierophant and the Torchbearer, to exhort the other Greeks at the mysteries to offer likewise of the first-fruits of the corn. The authority alleged in the decree for requiring or inviting offerings of first-fruits alike from Athenians and from foreigners is ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle. The Senate is further enjoined to send commissioners, so far as it could be done, to all Greek cities whatsoever, exhorting, though not commanding, them to send the first-fruits in compliance with ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle, and the state officials are directed to receive the offerings from such states in the same manner as the offerings of the Athenians and their allies. Instructions are also given for the building of three subterranean granaries at Eleusis, where the contributions of grain from Attica were to be stored. The best of the corn was to be offered in sacrifice as the Eumolpids might direct: oxen were to be bought and sacrificed, with gilt horns, not only to the two Goddesses but also to the God (Pluto), Triptolemus, Eubulus, and Athena; and the remainder of the grain was to be sold and with the produce votive offerings were to be dedicated with inscriptions setting forth that they had been dedicated from the offerings of first-fruits, and recording the names of all the Greeks who sent the offerings to Eleusis. The decree ends with a prayer that all who comply with these injunctions or exhortations and render their dues to the city of Athens and to the Two Goddesses, may enjoy prosperity together with good and abundant crops. Writing in the second century of our era, under the Roman empire, the rhetorician Aristides records the custom which the Greeks observed of sending year by year the first-fruits of the harvest to Athens in gratitude for the corn, but he speaks of the practice as a thing of the past.[191 - Aristides, Panathen. and Eleusin., vol. i. pp. 167 sq., 417 ed. G. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1829).]

Even after foreign states ceased to send first-fruits of the corn to Eleusis, they continued to acknowledge the benefit which the Athenians had conferred on mankind by diffusing among them Demeter's gift of the corn. Testimony of the Sicilian historian Diodorus. Testimony of Cicero and Himerius.

We may suspect that the tribute of corn ceased to flow from far countries to Athens, when, with her falling fortunes and decaying empire, her proud galleys had ceased to carry the terror of the Athenian arms into distant seas. But if the homage was no longer paid in the substantial shape of cargoes of grain, it continued down to the latest days of paganism to be paid in the cheaper form of gratitude for that inestimable benefit, which the Athenians claimed to have received from the Corn Goddess and to have liberally communicated to the rest of mankind. Even the Sicilians, who, inhabiting a fertile corn-growing island, worshipped Demeter and Persephone above all the gods and claimed to have been the first to receive the gift of the corn from the Corn Goddess,[192 - Diodorus Siculus, v. 2 and 4; Cicero, In C. Verrem, act. ii. bk. iv. chapters 48 sq. Both writers mention that the whole of Sicily was deemed sacred to Demeter and Persephone, and that corn was said to have grown in the island before it appeared anywhere else. In support of the latter claim Diodorus Siculus (v. 2. 4) asserts that wheat grew wild in many parts of Sicily.] nevertheless freely acknowledged that the Athenians had spread, though they had not originated, the useful discovery among the nations. Thus the patriotic Sicilian historian Diodorus, while giving the precedence to his fellow-countrymen, strives to be just to the Athenian pretensions in the following passage.[193 - Diodorus Siculus, v. 4.] “Mythologists,” says he, “relate that Demeter, unable to find her daughter, lit torches at the craters of Etna[194 - This legend, which is mentioned also by Cicero (In C. Verrem, act. ii. bk. iv. ch. 48), was no doubt told to explain the use of torches in the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. The author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells us (verses 47 sq.) that Demeter searched for her lost daughter for nine days with burning torches in her hands, but he does not say that the torches were kindled at the flames of Etna. In art Demeter and Persephone and their attendants were often represented with torches in their hands. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) plates xiii., xv. a, xvi., xvii., xviii., xix., xx., xxi. a, xxv., xxvii. b. Perhaps the legend of the torchlight search for Persephone and the use of the torches in the mysteries may have originated in a custom of carrying fire about the fields as a charm to secure sunshine for the corn. See The Golden Bough,

iii. 313.] and roamed over many parts of the world. Those people who received her best she rewarded by giving them in return the fruit of the wheat; and because the Athenians welcomed her most kindly of all, she bestowed the fruit of the wheat on them next after the Sicilians. Wherefore that people honoured the goddess more than any other folk by magnificent sacrifices and the mysteries at Eleusis, which for their extreme antiquity and sanctity have become famous among all men. From the Athenians many others received the boon of the corn and shared the seed with their neighbours, till they filled the whole inhabited earth with it. But as the people of Sicily, on account of the intimate relation in which they stood to Demeter and the Maiden, were the first to participate in the newly discovered corn, they appointed sacrifices and popular festivities in honour of each of the two goddesses, naming the celebrations after them and signifying the nature of the boons they had received by the dates of the festivals. For they celebrated the bringing home of the Maiden at the time when the corn was ripe, performing the sacrifice and holding the festivity with all the solemnity and zeal that might be reasonably expected of men who desired to testify their gratitude for so signal a gift bestowed on them before all the rest of mankind. But the sacrifice to Demeter they assigned to the time when the sowing of the corn begins; and for ten days they hold a popular festivity which bears the name of the goddess, and is remarkable as well for the magnificence of its pomp as for the costumes then worn in imitation of the olden time. During these days it is customary for people to rail at each other in foul language, because when Demeter was mourning for the rape of the Maiden she laughed at a ribald jest.”[195 - The words which I have translated “the bringing home of the Maiden” (τῆς Κόρης τὴν καταγωγήν) are explained with great probability by Professor M. P. Nilsson as referring to the bringing of the ripe corn to the barn or the threshing-floor (Griechische Feste, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 356 sq.). This interpretation accords perfectly with a well-attested sense of καταγωγή and its cognate verb κατάγειν, and is preferable to the other possible interpretation “the bringing down,” which would refer to the descent of Persephone into the nether world; for such a descent is hardly appropriate to a harvest festival.] Thus despite his natural prepossession in favour of his native land, Diodorus bears testimony both to the special blessing bestowed on the Athenians by the Corn Goddess, and to the generosity with which they had imparted the blessing to others, until it gradually spread to the ends of the earth. Again, Cicero, addressing a Roman audience, enumerates among the benefits which Athens was believed to have conferred on the world, the gift of the corn and its origin in Attic soil; and the cursory manner in which he alludes to it seems to prove that the tradition was familiar to his hearers.[196 - Cicero, Pro L. Flacco, 26.] Four centuries later the rhetorician Himerius speaks of Demeter's gift of the corn and the mysteries to the Athenians as the source of the first and greatest service rendered by their city to mankind;[197 - Himerius, Orat. ii. 5.] so ancient, widespread, and persistent was the legend which ascribed the origin of the corn to the goddess Demeter and associated it with the institution of the Eleusinian mysteries. No wonder that the Delphic oracle called Athens “the Metropolis of the Corn.”[198 - Μητρόπολις τῶν καρπῶν, Aristides, Panathen. vol. i. p. 168 ed. G. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1829).]

The Sicilians seem to have associated Demeter with the seed-corn and Persephone with the ripe ears. Difficulty of distinguishing between Demeter and Persephone as personifications of different aspects of the corn.

From the passage of Diodorus which I have quoted we learn that the Sicilians celebrated the festival of Demeter at the beginning of sowing, and the festival of Persephone at harvest. This proves that they associated, if they did not identify, the Mother Goddess with the seed-corn and the Daughter Goddess with the ripe ears. Could any association or identification be more easy and obvious to people who personified the processes of nature under the form of anthropomorphic deities? As the seed brings forth the ripe ear, so the Corn Mother Demeter gave birth to the Corn Daughter Persephone. It is true that difficulties arise when we attempt to analyse this seemingly simple conception. How, for example, are we to divide exactly the two persons of the divinity? At what precise moment does the seed cease to be the Corn Mother and begins to burgeon out into the Corn Daughter? And how far can we identify the material substance of the barley and wheat with the divine bodies of the Two Goddesses? Questions of this sort probably gave little concern to the sturdy swains who ploughed, sowed, and reaped the fat fields of Sicily. We cannot imagine that their night's rest was disturbed by uneasy meditations on these knotty problems. It would hardly be strange if the muzzy mind of the Sicilian bumpkin, who looked with blind devotion to the Two Goddesses for his daily bread, totally failed to distinguish Demeter from the seed and Persephone from the ripe sheaves, and if he accepted implicitly the doctrine of the real presence of the divinities in the corn without discriminating too curiously between the material and the spiritual properties of the barley or the wheat. And if he had been closely questioned by a rigid logician as to the exact distinction to be drawn between the two persons of the godhead who together represented for him the annual vicissitudes of the cereals, Hodge might have scratched his head and confessed that it puzzled him to say where precisely the one goddess ended and the other began, or why the seed buried in the ground should figure at one time as the dead daughter Persephone descending into the nether world, and at another as the living Mother Demeter about to give birth to next year's crop. Theological subtleties like these have posed longer heads than are commonly to be found on bucolic shoulders.

The time of the year when the first-fruits of the corn were offered to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis is not known.

The time of year at which the first-fruits were offered to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis is not explicitly mentioned by ancient authorities, and accordingly no inference can be drawn from the date of the offering as to its religious significance. It is true that at the Eleusinian mysteries the Hierophant and Torchbearer publicly exhorted the Greeks in general, as distinguished from the Athenians and their allies, to offer the first-fruits in accordance with ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle.[199 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 20, lines 25 sqq.; E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, lines 25 sqq., κελευέτω δὲ καί ὁ ἱεροφάντης καὶ ὁ δᾳδοῦχος μυστηρίοις ἀπάρχεσθαι τοὺς Ἔλληνας τοῦ καρποῦ κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν τὴν ἐγ Δελφῶν. By coupling μυστηρίοις with ἀπάρχεσθαι instead of with κελεύετω, Miss J. E. Harrison understands the offering instead of the exhortation to have been made at the mysteries (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition, p. 155, “Let the Hierophant and the Torchbearer command that at the mysteries the Hellenes should offer first-fruits of their crops,” etc.). This interpretation is no doubt grammatically permissible, but the context seems to plead strongly, if not to be absolutely decisive, in favour of the other. It is to be observed that the exhortation was addressed not to the Athenians and their allies (who were compelled to make the offering) but only to the other Greeks, who might make it or not as they pleased; and the amount of such voluntary contributions was probably small compared to that of the compulsory contributions, as to the date of which nothing is said. That the proclamation to the Greeks in general was an exhortation (κελευέτω), not a command, is clearly shewn by the words of the decree a few lines lower down, where commissioners are directed to go to all Greek states exhorting but not commanding them to offer the first-fruits (ἐκείνοις δὲ μὴ ἐπιτάττοντας, κελεύοντας δὲ ἀπάρχεσθαι ἐὰν βούλωνται κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν ἐγ Δελφῶν). The Athenians could not command free and independent states to make such offerings, still less could they prescribe the exact date when the offerings were to be made. All that they could and did do was, taking advantage of the great assembly of Greeks from all quarters at the mysteries, to invite or exhort, by the mouth of the great priestly functionaries, the foreigners to contribute.] But there is nothing to shew that the offerings were made immediately after the exhortation. Nor does any ancient authority support the view of a modern scholar that the offering of the first-fruits, or a portion of them, took place at the Festival before Ploughing (Proerosia),[200 - August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192 sqq.] though that festival would no doubt be an eminently appropriate occasion for propitiating with such offerings the goddess on whose bounty the next year's crop was believed to depend.

The Festival of the Threshing-floor (Haloa) at Eleusis.

On the other hand, we are positively told that the first-fruits were carried to Eleusis to be used at the Festival of the Threshing-floor (Haloa).[201 - Eustathius on Homer, Iliad, ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, i. 384 sq., s. v. Ἁλῶα. Compare O. Rubensohn, Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und Samothrake (Berlin, 1892), p. 116.] But the statement, cursorily reported by writers of no very high authority, cannot be implicitly relied upon; and even if it could, we should hardly be justified in inferring from it that all the first-fruits of the corn were offered to Demeter and Persephone at this festival. Be that as it may, the Festival of the Threshing-floor was intimately connected with the worship both of Demeter and of Dionysus, and accordingly it deserves our attention. It is said to have been sacred to both these deities;[202 - Eustathius on Homer, Iliad, ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, i. 384 sq., s. v. Ἁλῶα.] and while the name seems to connect it rather with the Corn Goddess than with the Wine God, we are yet informed that it was held by the Athenians on the occasion of the pruning of the vines and the tasting of the stored-up wine.[203 - Scholia in Lucianum, ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 279 sq. (scholium on Dialog. Meretr. vii. 4).] The festival is frequently mentioned in Eleusinian inscriptions, from some of which we gather that it included sacrifices to the two goddesses and a so-called Ancestral Contest, as to the nature of which we have no information.[204 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

Nos. 192, 246, 587, 640; Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135 sq. The passages of inscriptions and of ancient authors which refer to the festival are collected by Dr. L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 315 sq. For a discussion of the evidence see August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 359 sqq.; Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 145 sqq.] We may suppose that the festival or some part of it was celebrated on the Sacred Threshing-floor of Triptolemus at Eleusis;[205 - The threshing-floor of Triptolemus at Eleusis (Pausanias, i. 38. 6) is no doubt identical with the Sacred Threshing-floor mentioned in the great Eleusinian inscription of 329 b. c. (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, line 234). We read of a hierophant who, contrary to ancestral custom, sacrificed a victim on the hearth in the Hall at Eleusis during the Festival of the Threshing-floor, “it being unlawful to sacrifice victims on that day” (Demosthenes, Contra Neaeram, 116, pp. 1384 sq.), but from such an unlawful act no inference can be drawn as to the place where the festival was held. That the festival probably had special reference to the threshing-floor of Triptolemus has already been pointed out by O. Rubensohn (Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und Samothrake, Berlin, 1892, p. 118).] for as Triptolemus was the hero who is said to have diffused the knowledge of the corn all over the world, nothing could be more natural than that the Festival of the Threshing-floor should be held on the sacred threshing-floor which bore his name. As for Demeter, we have already seen how intimate was her association with the threshing-floor and the operation of threshing; according to Homer, she is the yellow goddess who parts the yellow grain from the white chaff at the threshing, and in Cos her image with the corn-stalks and the poppies in her hands stood on the threshing-floor.[206 - See above, pp. 41 (#x_8_i11)sq., 43 (#x_8_i15). Maximus Tyrius observes (Dissertat. xxx. 5) that husbandmen were the first to celebrate sacred rites in honour of Demeter at the threshing-floor.] The festival lasted one day, and no victims might be sacrificed at it;[207 - See above, p. , note 4.] but special use was made, as we have seen, of the first-fruits of the corn. With regard to the dating of the festival we are informed that it fell in the month Poseideon, which corresponds roughly to our December, and as the date rests on the high authority of the ancient Athenian antiquary Philochorus,[208 - Harpocration, s. v. Ἁλῶα (vol. i. p. 24, ed. G. Dindorf).] and is, moreover, indirectly confirmed by inscriptional evidence,[209 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 124, 144, with the editor's notes; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, p. 360.] we are bound to accept it. But it is certainly surprising to find a Festival of the Threshing-floor held so late in the year, long after the threshing, which in Greece usually takes place not later than midsummer, though on high ground in Crete it is sometimes prolonged till near the end of August.[210 - So I am informed by my friend Professor J. L. Myres, who speaks from personal observation.] We seem bound to conclude that the Festival of the Threshing-floor was quite distinct from the actual threshing of the corn.[211 - This is recognised by Professor M. P. Nilsson. See his Studia de Dionysiis Atticis (Lund, 1900), pp. 95 sqq., and his Griechische Feste, p. 329. To explain the lateness of the festival, Miss J. E. Harrison suggests that “the shift of date is due to Dionysos. The rival festivals of Dionysos were in mid-winter. He possessed himself of the festivals of Demeter, took over her threshing-floor and compelled the anomaly of a winter threshing festival” (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Second Edition, p. 147).] It is said to have included certain mystic rites performed by women alone, who feasted and quaffed wine, while they broke filthy jests on each other and exhibited cakes baked in the form of the male and female organs of generation.[212 - Scholiast on Lucian, Dial. Meretr. vii. 4 (Scholia in Lucianum, ed. H. Rabe, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 279-281).] If the latter particulars are correctly reported we may suppose that these indecencies, like certain obscenities which seem to have formed part of the Great Mysteries at Eleusis,[213 - Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 15 and 20, pp. 13 and 17 ed. Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 25-27, 35, 39.] were no mere wanton outbursts of licentious passion, but were deliberately practised as rites calculated to promote the fertility of the ground by means of homoeopathic or imitative magic. A like association of what we might call indecency with rites intended to promote the growth of the crops meets us in the Thesmophoria, a festival of Demeter celebrated by women alone, at which the character of the goddess as a source of fertility comes out clearly in the custom of mixing the remains of the sacrificial pigs with the seed-corn in order to obtain a plentiful crop. We shall return to this festival later on.[214 - See below, p. 116 (#x_13_i7); vol. ii. pp. 17 sqq.]

The Green Festival and the Festival of the Cornstalks at Eleusis. Epithets of Demeter referring to the corn.

Other festivals held at Eleusis in honour of Demeter and Persephone were known as the Green Festival and the Festival of the Cornstalks.[215 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 640; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), No. 135, p. 145. To be exact, while the inscription definitely mentions the sacrifices to Demeter and Persephone at the Green Festival, it does not record the deities to whom the sacrifice at the Festival of the Cornstalks (τὴν τῶν Καλαμαίων θυσίαν) was offered. But mentioned as it is in immediate connexion with the sacrifices to Demeter and Persephone at the Green Festival, we may fairly suppose that the sacrifice at the Festival of the Cornstalks was also offered to these goddesses.] Of the manner of their celebration we know nothing except that they comprised sacrifices, which were offered to Demeter and Persephone. But their names suffice to connect the two festivals with the green and the standing corn. We have seen that Demeter herself bore the title of Green, and that sacrifices were offered to her under that title which plainly aimed at promoting fertility.[216 - See above, p. 42 (#x_8_i13).] Among the many epithets applied to Demeter which mark her relation to the corn may further be mentioned “Wheat-lover,”[217 - Anthologia Palatina, vi. 36. 1 sq.] “She of the Corn,”[218 - Polemo, cited by Athenaeus, iii. 9, p. 416 b.] “Sheaf-bearer,”[219 - Nonnus, Dionys. xvii. 153. The Athenians sacrificed to her under this title (Eustathius, on Homer, Iliad, xviii. 553, p. 1162).] “She of the Threshing-floor,”[220 - Theocritus, Idyl. vii. 155; Orphica, xl. 5.] “She of the Winnowing-fan,”[221 - Anthologia Palatina, vi. 98. 1.] “Nurse of the Corn-ears,”[222 - Orphica, xl. 3.] “Crowned with Ears of Corn,”[223 - Anthologia Palatina, vi. 104. 8.] “She of the Seed,”[224 - Orphica, xl. 5.] “She of the Green Fruits,”[225 - Ibid.] “Heavy with Summer Fruits,”[226 - Orphica, xl. 18.] “Fruit-bearer,”[227 - This title she shared with Persephone at Tegea (Pausanias, viii. 53. 7), and under it she received annual sacrifices at Ephesus (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 655). It was applied to her also at Epidaurus (Ἐφημ. Ἀρχ., 1883, col. 153) and at Athens (Aristophanes, Frogs, 382), and appears to have been a common title of the goddess. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 318 note 30.] “She of the Great Loaf,” and “She of the Great Barley Loaf.”[228 - Polemo, cited by Athenaeus, iii. 73, p. 109 a b, x. 9. p. 416 c.] Of these epithets it may be remarked that though all of them are quite appropriate to a Corn Goddess, some of them would scarcely be applicable to an Earth Goddess and therefore they add weight to the other arguments which turn the scale in favour of the corn as the fundamental attribute of Demeter.

Belief in ancient and modern times that the corn-crops depend on possession of an image of Demeter.

How deeply implanted in the mind of the ancient Greeks was this faith in Demeter as goddess of the corn may be judged by the circumstance that the faith actually persisted among their Christian descendants at her old sanctuary of Eleusis down to the beginning of the nineteenth century. For when the English traveller Dodwell revisited Eleusis, the inhabitants lamented to him the loss of a colossal image of Demeter, which was carried off by Clarke in 1802 and presented to the University of Cambridge, where it still remains. “In my first journey to Greece,” says Dodwell, “this protecting deity was in its full glory, situated in the centre of a threshing-floor, amongst the ruins of her temple. The villagers were impressed with a persuasion that their rich harvests were the effect of her bounty, and since her removal, their abundance, as they assured me, has disappeared.”[229 - E. Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece (London, 1819), i. 583. E. D. Clarke found the image “on the side of the road, immediately before entering the village, and in the midst of a heap of dung, buried as high as the neck, a little beyond the farther extremity of the pavement of the temple. Yet even this degrading situation had not been assigned to it wholly independent of its antient history. The inhabitants of the small village which is now situated among the ruins of Eleusis still regarded this statue with a very high degree of superstitious veneration. They attributed to its presence the fertility of their land; and it was for this reason that they heaped around it the manure intended for their fields. They believed that the loss of it would be followed by no less a calamity than the failure of their annual harvests; and they pointed to the ears of bearded wheat, upon the sculptured ornaments upon the head of the figure, as a never-failing indication of the produce of the soil.” When the statue was about to be removed, a general murmur ran among the people, the women joining in the clamour. “They had been always,” they said, “famous for their corn; and the fertility of the land would cease when the statue was removed.” See E. D. Clarke, Travels in various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, iii. (London, 1814) pp. 772-774, 787 sq. Compare J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1910), p. 80, who tells us that “the statue was regularly crowned with flowers in the avowed hope of obtaining good harvests.”] Thus we see the Corn Goddess Demeter standing on the threshing-floor of Eleusis and dispensing corn to her worshippers in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, precisely as her image stood and dispensed corn to her worshippers on the threshing-floor of Cos in the days of Theocritus. And just as the people of Eleusis last century attributed the diminution of their harvests to the loss of the image of Demeter, so in antiquity the Sicilians, a corn-growing people devoted to the worship of the two Corn Goddesses, lamented that the crops of many towns had perished because the unscrupulous Roman governor Verres had impiously carried off the image of Demeter from her famous temple at Henna.[230 - Cicero, In C. Verrem, act. ii. lib. iv. 51.] Could we ask for a clearer proof that Demeter was indeed the goddess of the corn than this belief, held by the Greeks down to modern times, that the corn-crops depended on her presence and bounty and perished when her image was removed?

Sacred marriage of Zeus and Demeter at Eleusis. Homer on the love of Zeus for Demeter. Zeus the Sky God may have been confused with Subterranean Zeus, that is, Pluto. Demeter may have been confused with Persephone; in art the types of the two goddesses are often very similar.

In a former part of this work I followed an eminent French scholar in concluding, from various indications, that part of the religious drama performed in the mysteries of Eleusis may have been a marriage between the sky-god Zeus and the corn-goddess Demeter, represented by the hierophant and the priestess of the goddess respectively.[231 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 138 sq.] The conclusion is arrived at by combining a number of passages, all more or less vague and indefinite, of late Christian writers; hence it must remain to some extent uncertain and cannot at the best lay claim to more than a fair degree of probability. It may be, as Professor W. Ridgeway holds, that this dramatic marriage of the god and goddess was an innovation foisted into the Eleusinian Mysteries in that great welter of religions which followed the meeting of the East and the West in the later ages of antiquity.[232 - This view was expressed by my friend Professor Ridgeway in a paper which I had the advantage of hearing him read at Cambridge in the early part of 1911. Compare The Athenaeum, No. 4360, May 20th, 1911, p. 576.] If a marriage of Zeus and Demeter did indeed form an important feature of the Mysteries in the fifth century before our era, it is certainly remarkable, as Professor Ridgeway has justly pointed out, that no mention of Zeus occurs in the public decree of that century which regulates the offerings of first-fruits and the sacrifices to be made to the gods and goddesses of Eleusis.[233 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 20; E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22 sq. See above, pp. 55 (#x_9_i1)sq.] At the same time we must bear in mind that, if the evidence for the ritual marriage of Zeus and Demeter is late and doubtful, the evidence for the myth is ancient and indubitable. The story was known to Homer, for in the list of beauties to whom he makes Zeus, in a burst of candour, confess that he had lost his too susceptible heart, there occurs the name of “the fair-haired Queen Demeter”;[234 - Homer, Iliad, xiv. 326.] and in another passage the poet represents the jealous god smiting with a thunderbolt the favoured lover with whom the goddess had forgotten her dignity among the furrows of a fallow field.[235 - Homer, Odyssey, v. 125 sqq.] Moreover, according to one tradition, Dionysus himself was the offspring of the intrigue between Zeus and Demeter.[236 - Diodorus Siculus, iii. 62. 6.] Thus there is no intrinsic improbability in the view that one or other of these unedifying incidents in the backstairs chronicle of Olympus should have formed part of the sacred peep-show in the Eleusinian Mysteries. But it seems just possible that the marriage to which the Christian writers allude with malicious joy may after all have been of a more regular and orthodox pattern. We are positively told that the rape of Persephone was acted at the Mysteries;[237 - Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. 12, p. 12, ed. Potter.] may that scene not have been followed by another representing the solemnisation of her nuptials with her ravisher and husband Pluto? It is to be remembered that Pluto was sometimes known as a god of fertility under the title of Subterranean Zeus. It was to him under that title as well as to Demeter, that the Greek ploughman prayed at the beginning of the ploughing;[238 - Hesiod, Works and Days, 465 sqq.] and the people of Myconus used to sacrifice to Subterranean Zeus and Subterranean Earth for the prosperity of the crops on the twelfth day of the month Lenaeon.[239 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,