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

No. 615, lines 25 sq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, No. 714; J. de Prott et L. Ziehen, Leges Graecorum Sacrae, No. 4.] Thus it may be that the Zeus whose marriage was dramatically represented at the Mysteries was not the sky-god Zeus, but his brother Zeus of the Underworld, and that the writers who refer to the ceremony have confused the two brothers. This view, if it could be established, would dispose of the difficulty raised by the absence of the name of Zeus in the decree which prescribes the offerings to be made to the gods of Eleusis; for although in that decree Pluto is not mentioned under the name of Subterranean Zeus, he is clearly referred to, as the editors of the inscription have seen, under the vague title of “the God,” while his consort Persephone is similarly referred to under the title of “the Goddess,” and it is ordained that perfect victims shall be sacrificed to both of them. However, if we thus dispose of one difficulty, it must be confessed that in doing so we raise another. For if the bridegroom in the Sacred Marriage at Eleusis was not the sky-god Zeus, but the earth-god Pluto, we seem driven to suppose that, contrary to the opinion of the reverend Christian scandal-mongers, the bride was his lawful wife Persephone and not his sister and mother-in-law Demeter. In short, on the hypothesis which I have suggested we are compelled to conclude that the ancient busybodies who lifted the veil from the mystic marriage were mistaken as to the person both of the divine bridegroom and of the divine bride. In regard to the bridegroom I have conjectured that they may have confused the two brothers, Zeus of the Upper World and Zeus of the Lower World. In regard to the bride, can any reason be suggested for confounding the persons of the mother and daughter? On the view here taken of the nature of Demeter and Persephone nothing could be easier than to confuse them with each other, for both of them were mythical embodiments of the corn, the mother Demeter standing for the old corn of last year and the daughter Persephone standing for the new corn of this year. In point of fact Greek artists, both of the archaic and of later periods, frequently represent the Mother and Daughter side by side in forms which resemble each other so closely that eminent modern experts have sometimes differed from each other on the question, which is Demeter and which is Persephone; indeed in some cases it might be quite impossible to distinguish the two if it were not for the inscriptions attached to the figures.[240 - See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907), p. 259, “It was long before the mother could be distinguished from the daughter by any organic difference of form or by any expressive trait of countenance. On the more ancient vases and terracottas they appear rather as twin-sisters, almost as if the inarticulate artist were aware of their original identity of substance. And even among the monuments of the transitional period it is difficult to find any representation of the goddesses in characters at once clear and impressive. We miss this even in the beautiful vase of Hieron in the British Museum, where the divine pair are seen with Triptolemos: the style is delicate and stately, and there is a certain impression of inner tranquil life in the group, but without the aid of the inscriptions the mother would not be known from the daughter”; id., vol. iii. 274, “But it would be wrong to give the impression that the numismatic artists of this period were always careful to distinguish – in such a manner as the above works indicate – between mother and daughter. The old idea of their unity of substance still seemed to linger as an art-tradition: the very type we have just been examining appears on a fourth-century coin of Hermione, and must have been used here to designate Demeter Chthonia who was there the only form that the corn-goddess assumed. And even at Metapontum, where coin-engraving was long a great art, a youthful head crowned with corn, which in its own right and on account of its resemblance to the masterpiece of Euainetos could claim the name of Kore [Persephone], is actually inscribed ‘Damater.’ ” Compare J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1878), p. 453. In regard, for example, to the famous Eleusinian bas-relief, one of the most beautiful monuments of ancient religious art, which seems to represent Demeter giving the corn-stalks to Triptolemus, while Persephone crowns his head, there has been much divergence of opinion among the learned as to which of the goddesses is Demeter and which Persephone. See J. Overbeck, op. cit. iii. 427 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, op. cit. iii. 263 sq. On the close resemblance of the artistic types of Demeter and Persephone see further E. Gerhard, Gesammelte akademische Abhandlungen (Berlin, 1866-1868), ii. 357 sqq.; F. Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 2, s. v. “Ceres,” p. 1049.] The ancient sculptors, vase-painters, and engravers must have had some good reason for portraying the two goddesses in types which are almost indistinguishable from each other; and what better reason could they have had than the knowledge that the two persons of the godhead were one in substance, that they stood merely for two different aspects of the same simple natural phenomenon, the growth of the corn? Thus it is easy to understand why Demeter and Persephone may have been confused in ritual as well as in art, why in particular the part of the divine bride in a Sacred Marriage may sometimes have been assigned to the Mother and sometimes to the Daughter. But all this, I fully admit, is a mere speculation, and I only put it forward as such. We possess far too little information as to a Sacred Marriage in the Eleusinian Mysteries to be justified in speaking with confidence on so obscure a subject.

The date of the Eleusinian Mysteries in September would have been a very appropriate time for a Sacred Marriage of the Sky God with the Corn Goddess or the Earth Goddess.

One thing, however, which we may say with a fair degree of probability is that, if such a marriage did take place at Eleusis, no date in the agricultural year could well have been more appropriate for it than the date at which the Mysteries actually fell, namely about the middle of September. The long Greek summer is practically rainless and in the fervent heat and unbroken drought all nature languishes. The river-beds are dry, the fields parched. The farmer awaits impatiently the setting-in of the autumnal rains, which begin in October and mark the great season for ploughing and sowing. What time could be fitter for celebrating the union of the Corn Goddess with her husband the Earth God or perhaps rather with her paramour the Sky God, who will soon descend in fertilising showers to quicken the seed in the furrows? Such embraces of the divine powers or their human representatives might well be deemed, on the principles of homoeopathic or imitative magic, indispensable to the growth of the crops. At least similar ideas have been entertained and similar customs have been practised by many peoples;[241 - The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 97 sqq.] and in the legend of Demeter's love-adventure among the furrows of the thrice-ploughed fallow[242 - Homer, Odyssey, v. 125 sqq.] we seem to catch a glimpse of rude rites of the same sort performed in the fields at sowing-time by Greek ploughmen for the sake of ensuring the growth of the seed which they were about to commit to the bosom of the naked earth. In this connexion a statement of ancient writers as to the rites of Eleusis receives fresh significance. We are told that at these rites the worshippers looked up to the sky and cried “Rain!” and then looked down at the earth and cried “Conceive!”[243 - Proclus, on Plato, Timaeus, p. 293 c, quoted by L. F. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 357, where Lobeck's emendation of ὔε, κύε for υἶε, τοκυῖε (Aglaophamus, p. 782) may be accepted as certain, confirmed as it is by Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, v. 7, p. 146, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859), τὸ μέγα καὶ ἄρρητον Ἐλευσινίων μυστήριον ὔε κύε.] Nothing could be more appropriate at a marriage of the Sky God and the Earth or Corn Goddess than such invocations to the heaven to pour down rain and to the earth or the corn to conceive seed under the fertilising shower; in Greece no time could well be more suitable for the utterance of such prayers than just at the date when the Great Mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated, at the end of the long drought of summer and before the first rains of autumn.

The Eleusinian games distinct from the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Eleusinian games of later origin than the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Eleusinian games sacred to Demeter and Persephone. Triptolemus, the mythical hero of the corn.

Different both from the Great Mysteries and the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis were the games which were celebrated there on a great scale once in every four years and on a less scale once in every two years.[244 - As to the Eleusinian games see August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum, pp. 179-204; P. Foucart, Les Grands Mystères d'Éleusis (Paris, 1900), pp. 143-147; P. Stengel, in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. coll. 2330 sqq. The quadriennial celebration of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned by Aristotle (Constitution of Athens, 54), and in the great Eleusinian inscription of 329 b. c., which is also our only authority for the biennial celebration of the games. See Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 258 sqq. The regular and official name of the games was simply Eleusinia (τὰ Ἐλευσίνια), a name which late writers applied incorrectly to the Mysteries. See August Mommsen, op. cit. pp. 179 sqq.; Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 587, note 171.] That the games were distinct from the Mysteries is proved by their periods, which were quadriennial and biennial respectively, whereas the Mysteries were celebrated annually. Moreover, in Greek epigraphy, our most authentic evidence in such matters, the games and the Mysteries are clearly distinguished from each other by being mentioned separately in the same inscription.[245 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 246, lines 25 sqq.; id. No. 587, lines 244 sq., 258 sqq.] But like the Mysteries the games seem to have been very ancient; for the Parian Chronicler, who wrote in the year 264 b. c., assigns the foundation of the Eleusinian games to the reign of Pandion, the son of Cecrops. However, he represents them as of later origin than the Eleusinian Mysteries, which according to him were instituted by Eumolpus in the reign of Erechtheus, after Demeter had planted corn in Attica and Triptolemus had sown seed in the Rarian plain at Eleusis.[246 - Marmor Parium, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i. 544 sq.] This testimony to the superior antiquity of the Mysteries is in harmony with our most ancient authority on the rites of Eleusis, the author of the Hymn to Demeter, who describes the origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but makes no reference or allusion to the Eleusinian Games. However, the great age of the games is again vouched for at a much later date by the rhetorician Aristides, who even declares that they were the oldest of all Greek games.[247 - Aristides, Panathen. and Eleusin. vol. i. pp. 168, 417, ed. G. Dindorf.] With regard to the nature and meaning of the games our information is extremely scanty, but an old scholiast on Pindar tells us that they were celebrated in honour of Demeter and Persephone as a thank-offering at the conclusion of the corn-harvest.[248 - Schol. on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150, p. 228, ed. Aug. Boeckh.] His testimony is confirmed by that of the rhetorician Aristides, who mentions the institution of the Eleusinian games in immediate connexion with the offerings of the first-fruits of the corn, which many Greek states sent to Athens;[249 - Aristides, ll.cc.] and from an inscription dated about the close of the third century before our era we learn that at the Great Eleusinian Games sacrifices were offered to Demeter and Persephone.[250 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 246, lines 25 sqq. The editor rightly points out that the Great Eleusinian Games are identical with the games celebrated every fourth year, which are mentioned in the decree of 329 b. c. (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 260 sq.).] Further, we gather from an official Athenian inscription of 329 b. c. that both the Great and the Lesser Games included athletic and musical contests, a horse-race, and a competition which bore the name of the Ancestral or Hereditary Contest, and which accordingly may well have formed the original kernel of the games.[251 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 259 sqq. From other Attic inscriptions we learn that the Eleusinian games comprised a long foot-race, a race in armour, and a pancratium. See Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 587 note 171 (vol. ii. p. 313). The Great Eleusinian Games also included the pentathlum (Dittenberger, op. cit. No. 678, line 2). The pancratium included wrestling and boxing; the pentathlum included a foot-race, leaping, throwing the quoit, throwing the spear, and wrestling. See W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Third Edition, s. vv. “Pancratium” and “Pentathlon.”] Unfortunately nothing is known about this Ancestral Contest. We might be tempted to identify it with the Ancestral Contest included in the Eleusinian Festival of the Threshing-floor,[252 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 246, lines 46 sqq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, No. 609. See above, p. 61 (#x_9_i11). The identification lies all the nearer to hand because the inscription records a decree in honour of a man who had sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone at the Great Eleusinian Games, and a provision is contained in the decree that the honour should be proclaimed “at the Ancestral Contest of the Festival of the Threshing-floor.” The same Ancestral Contest at the Festival of the Threshing-floor is mentioned in another Eleusinian inscription, which records honours decreed to a man who had sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone at the Festival of the Threshing-floor. See Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135 sq.] which was probably held on the Sacred Threshing-floor of Triptolemus at Eleusis.[253 - See above, p. 61 (#x_9_i11).] If the identification could be proved, we should have another confirmation of the tradition which connects the games with Demeter and the corn; for according to the prevalent tradition it was to Triptolemus that Demeter first revealed the secret of the corn, and it was he whom she sent out as an itinerant missionary to impart the beneficent discovery of the cereals to all mankind and to teach them to sow the seed.[254 - Diodorus Siculus, v. 68; Arrian, Indic. 7; Lucian, Somnium, 15; id., Philopseudes, 3; Plato, Laws, vi. 22, p. 782; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, p. 53, ed. C. Lang; Pausanias, i. 14. 2, vii. 18. 2, viii. 4. 1; Aristides, Eleusin. vol. i. pp. 416 sq., ed. G. Dindorf; Hyginus, Fabulae, 147, 259, 277; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 549 sqq.; id., Metamorph. v. 645 sqq.; Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 19. See also above, p. 54. As to Triptolemus, see L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone (Hamburg, 1837), pp. 282 sqq.; id., Griechische Mythologie,

i. 769 sqq.] On monuments of art, especially in vase-paintings, he is constantly represented along with Demeter in this capacity, holding corn-stalks in his hand and sitting in his car, which is sometimes winged and sometimes drawn by dragons, and from which he is said to have sowed the seed down on the whole world as he sped through the air.[255 - C. Strube, Studien über den Bilderkreis von Eleusis (Leipsic, 1870), pp. 4 sqq.; J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1880), pp. 530 sqq.; A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des classischen Altertums, iii. 1855 sqq. That Triptolemus sowed the earth with corn from his car is mentioned by Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, pp. 53 sq., ed. C. Lang; Hyginus, Fabulae, 147; and Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 19.] At Eleusis victims bought with the first-fruits of the wheat and barley were sacrificed to him as well as to Demeter and Persephone.[256 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 20, lines 37 sqq.; E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. (Cambridge, 1905), No. 9, p. 24.] In short, if we may judge from the combined testimony of Greek literature and art, Triptolemus was the corn-hero first and foremost. Even beyond the limits of the Greek world, all men, we are told, founded sanctuaries and erected altars in his honour because he had bestowed on them the gift of the corn.[257 - Arrian, Epicteti Dissertationes, i. 4. 30.] His very name has been plausibly explained both in ancient and modern times as “Thrice-ploughed” with reference to the Greek custom of ploughing the land thrice a year,[258 - Scholiast on Homer, Iliad, xviii. 483; L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone, p. 286; F. A. Paley on Hesiod, Works and Days, 460. The custom of ploughing the land thrice is alluded to by Homer (Iliad, xviii. 542, Odyssey, v. 127) and Hesiod (Theogony, 971), and is expressly mentioned by Theophrastus (Historia Plantarum, vii. 13. 6).] and the derivation is said to be on philological principles free from objection.[259 - So I am informed by my learned friend the Rev. Professor J. H. Moulton.] In fact it would seem as if Triptolemus, like Demeter and Persephone themselves, were a purely mythical being, an embodiment of the conception of the first sower. At all events in the local Eleusinian legend, according to an eminent scholar, who has paid special attention to Attic genealogy, “Triptolemus does not, like his comrade Eumolpus or other founders of Eleusinian priestly families, continue his kind, but without leaving offspring who might perpetuate his priestly office, he is removed from the scene of his beneficent activity. As he appeared, so he vanishes again from the legend, after he has fulfilled his divine mission.”[260 - J. Toepffer, Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889), pp. 138 sq. However, the Eleusinian Torchbearer Callias apparently claimed to be descended from Triptolemus, for in a speech addressed to the Lacedaemonians he is said by Xenophon (Hellenica, vi. 3. 6) to have spoken of Triptolemus as “our ancestor” (ὁ ἡμέτερος πρόγονος). See above, p. 54 (#x_9_i1). But it is possible that Callias was here speaking, not as a direct descendant of Triptolemus, but merely as an Athenian, who naturally ranked Triptolemus among the most illustrious of the ancestral heroes of his people. Even if he intended to claim actual descent from the hero, this would prove nothing as to the historical character of Triptolemus, for many Greek families boasted of being descended from gods.]

Prizes of barley given to victors in the Eleusinian games.

However, there is no sufficient ground for identifying the Ancestral Contest of the Eleusinian games with the Ancestral Contest of the Threshing-festival at Eleusis, and accordingly the connexion of the games with the corn-harvest and with the corn-hero Triptolemus must so far remain uncertain. But a clear trace of such a connexion may be seen in the custom of rewarding the victors in the Eleusinian games with measures of barley; in the official Athenian inscription of 329 b. c., which contains the accounts of the superintendents of Eleusis and the Treasurers of the Two Goddesses, the amounts of corn handed over by these officers to the priests and priestesses for the purposes of the games is exactly specified.[261 - The prize of barley is mentioned by the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150. The Scholiast on Aristides (vol. iii. pp. 55, 56, ed. G. Dindorf) mentions ears of corn as the prize without specifying the kind of corn. In the official Athenian inscription of 329 b. c., though the amount of corn distributed in prizes both at the quadriennial and at the biennial games is stated, we are not told whether the corn was barley or wheat. See Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 259 sqq. According to Aristides (Eleusin. vol. i. p. 417, ed. G. Dindorf, compare p. 168) the prize consisted of the corn which had first appeared at Eleusis.] This of itself is sufficient to prove that the Eleusinian games were closely connected with the worship of Demeter and Persephone. The grain thus distributed in prizes was probably reaped on the Rarian plain near Eleusis, where according to the legend Triptolemus sowed the first corn.[262 - Marmor Parium, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i. 544. That the Rarian plain was the first to be sown and the first to bear crops is affirmed by Pausanias (i. 38. 6).] Certainly we know that the barley grown on that plain was used in sacrifices and for the baking of the sacrificial cakes,[263 - Pausanias, i. 38. 6.] from which we may reasonably infer that the prizes of barley, to which no doubt a certain sanctity attached in the popular mind, were brought from the same holy fields. So sacred was the Rarian plain that no dead body was allowed to defile it. When such a pollution accidentally took place, it was expiated by the sacrifice of a pig,[264 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 119 sq. In the same inscription, a few lines lower down, mention is made of two pigs which were used in purifying the sanctuary at Eleusis. On the pig in Greek purificatory rites, see my notes on Pausanias, ii. 31. 8 and v. 16. 8.] the usual victim employed in Greek purificatory rites.

The Eleusinian games primarily concerned with Demeter and Persephone. The Ancestral Contest in the games may have been originally a contest between the reapers to finish reaping.

Thus, so far as the scanty evidence at our disposal permits us to judge, the Eleusinian games, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, would seem to have been primarily concerned with Demeter and Persephone as goddesses of the corn. At least that is expressly affirmed by the old scholiast on Pindar and it is borne out by the practice of rewarding the victors with measures of barley. Perhaps the Ancestral Contest, which may well have formed the original nucleus of the games, was a contest between the reapers on the sacred Rarian plain to see who should finish his allotted task before his fellows. For success in such a contest no prize could be more appropriate than a measure of the sacred barley which the victorious reaper had just cut on the barley-field. In the sequel we shall see that similar contests between reapers have been common on the harvest fields of modern Europe, and it will appear that such competitions are not purely athletic; their aim is not simply to demonstrate the superior strength, activity, and skill of the victors; it is to secure for the particular farm the possession of the blooming young Corn-maiden of the present year, conceived as the embodiment of the vigorous grain, and to pass on to laggard neighbours the aged Corn-mother of the past year, conceived as an embodiment of the effete and outworn energies of the corn.[265 - See below, pp. 140 (#x_14_i20)sqq., 155 (#x_15_i24)sqq., 164 (#x_16_i20)sqq., compare 218 (#x_21_i19)sqq.] May it not have been so at Eleusis? may not the reapers have vied with each other for possession of the young corn-spirit Persephone and for avoidance of the old corn-spirit Demeter? may not the prize of barley, which rewarded the victor in the Ancestral Contest, have been supposed to house in the ripe ears no less a personage than the Corn-maiden Persephone herself? And if there is any truth in these conjectures (for conjectures they are and nothing more), we may hazard a guess as to the other Ancestral Contest which took place at the Eleusinian Festival of the Threshing-floor. Perhaps it in like manner was originally a competition between threshers on the sacred threshing-floor of Triptolemus to determine who should finish threshing his allotted quantity of corn before the rest. Such competitions have also been common, as we shall see presently, on the threshing-floors of modern Europe, and their motive again has not been simple emulation between sturdy swains for the reward of strength and dexterity; it has been a dread of being burdened with the aged and outworn spirit of the corn conceived as present in the bundle of corn-stalks which receives the last stroke at threshing.[266 - See below, pp. 147 (#x_15_i5)sqq., 221 (#x_21_i31)sq., 223 (#x_21_i35)sq.] We know that effigies of Demeter with corn and poppies in her hands stood on Greek threshing-floors.[267 - See above, p. 43 (#x_8_i15).] Perhaps at the conclusion of the threshing these effigies, as representatives of the old Corn-spirit, were passed on to neighbours who had not yet finished threshing the corn. At least the supposition is in harmony with modern customs observed on the threshing-floor.

Games at harvest festivals in modern Europe.

It is possible that the Eleusinian games were no more than a popular merrymaking celebrated at the close of the harvest. This view of their character might be supported by modern analogies; for in some parts of Germany it has been customary for the harvesters, when their work is done, to engage in athletic competitions of various kinds, which have at first sight no very obvious connexion with the business of harvesting. For example, at Besbau near Luckau great cakes were baked at the harvest-festival, and the labourers, both men and women, ran races for them. He or she who reached them first received not only a cake, but a handkerchief or the like as a prize. Again, at Bergkirchen, when the harvest was over, a garland was hung up and the harvesters rode at it on horseback and tried to bring it down with a stab or a blow as they galloped past. He who succeeded in bringing it down was proclaimed King. Again, in the villages near Fürstenwald at harvest the young men used to fetch a fir-tree from the wood, peel the trunk, and set it up like a mast in the middle of the village. A handkerchief and other prizes were fastened to the top of the pole and the men clambered up for them.[268 - A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), pp. 398, 399, 400.] Among the peasantry of Silesia, we are told, the harvest-home broadened out into a popular festival, in which athletic sports figured prominently. Thus, for example, at Järischau, in the Strehlitz district, a scythe, a rake, a flail, and a hay-fork or pitchfork were fastened to the top of a smooth pole and awarded as prizes, in order of merit, to the men who displayed most agility in climbing the pole. Younger men amused themselves with running in sacks, high jumps, and so forth. At Prauss, near Nimptsch, the girls ran a race in a field for aprons as prizes. In the central parts of Silesia a favourite amusement at harvest was a race between girls for a garland of leaves or flowers.[269 - P. Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien (Leipsic, 1903-1906), ii. 70 sq.] Yet it seems probable that all such sports at harvest were in origin not mere pastimes, but that they were serious attempts to secure in one way or another the help and blessing of the corn-spirit. Thus in some parts of Prussia, at the close of the rye-harvest, a few sheaves used to be left standing in the field after all the rest of the rye had been carted home. These sheaves were then made up into the shape of a man and dressed out in masculine costume, and all the young women were obliged to run a race, of which the corn-man was the goal. She who won the race led off the dancing in the evening.[270 - A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen (Berlin, 1843), pp. 341 sq.] Here the aim of the foot-race among the young women is clearly to secure the corn-spirit embodied in the last sheaf left standing on the field; for, as we shall see later on, the last sheaf is commonly supposed to harbour the corn-spirit and is treated accordingly like a man or a woman.[271 - See below, pp. 133 (#x_14_i6)sqq.]

Date of the Eleusinian games uncertain.

If the Ancestral Contest at the Eleusinian games was, as I have conjectured, a contest between the reapers on the sacred barley-field, we should have to suppose that the games were celebrated at barley-harvest, which in the lowlands of Greece falls in May or even at the end of April. This theory is in harmony with the evidence of the scholiast on Pindar, who tells us that the Eleusinian games were celebrated after the corn-harvest.[272 - Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150, p. 228, ed. Aug. Boeckh.] No other ancient authority, so far as I am aware, mentions at what time of the year these games were held. Modern authorities, arguing from certain slight and to some extent conjectural data, have variously assigned them to Metageitnion (August) and to Boedromion (September), and those who assign them to Boedromion (September) are divided in opinion as to whether they preceded or followed the Mysteries.[273 - The games are assigned to Metageitnion by P. Stengel (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. coll. 2331 sq.) and to Boedromion by August Mommsen and W. Dittenberger. The last-mentioned scholar supposes that the games immediately followed the Mysteries, and August Mommsen formerly thought so too, but he afterwards changed his view and preferred to suppose that the games preceded the Mysteries. See Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), p. 263; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 182 sqq.; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, note 171 (vol. ii. pp. 313 sq.). The dating of the games in Metageitnion or in the early part of Boedromion depends on little more than a series of conjectures, particularly the conjectural restoration of an inscription and the conjectural dating of a certain sacrifice to Democracy.] However, the evidence is far too slender and uncertain to allow of any conclusions being based on it.

Why should games intended to promote the annual growth of the crops be held only every second or fourth year? The Eleusinian Mysteries probably much older than the Eleusinian games.

But there is a serious difficulty in the way of connecting the Eleusinian games with the goddesses of the corn. How is the quadriennial or the biennial period of the games to be reconciled with the annual growth of the crops? Year by year the barley and the wheat are sown and reaped; how then could the games, held only every fourth or every second year, have been regarded as thank-offerings for the annual harvest? On this view of their nature, which is the one taken by the old scholiast on Pindar, though the harvest was received at the hands of the Corn Goddess punctually every year, men thanked her for her bounty only every second year or even only every fourth year. What were her feelings likely to be in the blank years when she got no thanks and no games? She might naturally resent such negligence and ingratitude and punish them by forbidding the seed to sprout, just as she did at Eleusis when she mourned the loss of her daughter. In short, men could hardly expect to reap crops in years in which they offered nothing to the Corn Goddess. That would indeed appear to be the view generally taken by the ancient Greeks; for we have seen that year by year they presented the first-fruits of the barley and the wheat to Demeter, not merely in the solemn state ritual of Eleusis, but also in rustic festivals held by farmers on their threshing-floors. The pious Greek husbandman would no doubt have been shocked and horrified at a proposal to pay the Corn Goddess her dues only every second or fourth year. “No offerings, no crops,” he would say to himself, and would anticipate nothing but dearth and famine in any year when he failed to satisfy the just and lawful demands of the divinity on whose good pleasure he believed the growth of the corn to be directly dependent. Accordingly we may regard it as highly probable that from the very beginning of settled and regular agriculture in Greece men annually propitiated the deities of the corn with a ritual of some sort, and rendered them their dues in the shape of offerings of the ripe barley and wheat. Now we know that the Mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated every year, and accordingly, if I am right in interpreting them as essentially a dramatic representation of the annual vicissitudes of the corn performed for the purpose of quickening the seed, it becomes probable that in some form or another they were annually held at Eleusis long before the practice arose of celebrating games there every fourth or every second year. In short, the Eleusinian mysteries were in all probability far older than the Eleusinian games. How old they were we cannot even guess. But when we consider that the cultivation of barley and wheat, the two cereals specially associated with Demeter, appears to have been practised in prehistoric Europe from the Stone Age onwards,[274 - A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (London, 1884), pp. 354 sq., 367 sqq.; R. Munro, The Lake-dwellings of Europe (London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1890), pp. 497 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901), pp. 8 sqq.; id., Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte (Jena, 1906-1907), ii. 185 sqq.; H. Hirt, Die Indogermanen (Strasburg, 1905-1907), i. 254 sqq., 273 sq., 276 sqq., ii. 640 sqq.; M. Much, Die Heimat der Indogermanen (Jena and Berlin, 1904), pp. 221 sqq.; T. E. Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily (Oxford, 1909), p. 362.] we shall be disposed to admit that the annual performance of religious or magical rites at Eleusis for the purpose of ensuring good crops, whether by propitiating the Corn Goddess with offerings of first-fruits or by dramatically representing the sowing and the growth of the corn in mythical form, probably dates from an extremely remote antiquity.

Quadriennial period of many of the great games of Greece. Old octennial period of the Pythian and probably of the Olympian games. The octennial cycle was instituted by the Greeks at a very early era for the purpose of harmonising solar and lunar time.

But in order to clear our ideas on this subject it is desirable to ascertain, if possible, the reason for holding the Eleusinian games at intervals of two or four years. The reason for holding a harvest festival and thanksgiving every year is obvious enough; but why hold games only every second or every fourth year? The reason for such limitations is by no means obvious on the face of them, especially if the growth of the crops is deemed dependent on the celebration. In order to find an answer to this question it may be well at the outset to confine our attention to the Great Eleusinian Games, which were celebrated only every fourth year. That these were the principal games appears not only from their name, but from the testimony of Aristotle, or at least of the author of The Constitution of Athens, who notices only the quadriennial or, as in accordance with Greek idiom he calls it, the penteteric celebration of the games.[275 - Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 54, where the quadriennial (penteteric) festival of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned along with the quadriennial festivals of the Panathenaica, the Delia, the Brauronia, and the Heraclea. The biennial (trieteric) festival of the Eleusinian Games is mentioned only in the inscription of 329 b. c. (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

No. 587, lines 259 sq.). As to the identity of the Great Eleusinian Games with the quadriennial games see Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, No. 246 note 9, No. 587 note 171.] Now the custom of holding games at intervals of four years was very common in Greece; to take only a few conspicuous examples the Olympic games at Olympia, the Pythian games at Delphi, the Panathenaic games at Athens, and the Eleutherian games at Plataea[276 - As to the Plataean games see Plutarch, Aristides, 21; Pausanias, ix. 2. 6.] were all celebrated at quadriennial or, as the Greeks called them, penteteric periods; and at a later time when Augustus instituted, or rather renewed on a more splendid scale, the games at Actium to commemorate his great victory, he followed a well-established Greek precedent by ordaining that they should be quadriennial.[277 - Strabo, vii. 7. 6, p. 325; Suetonius, Augustus, 18; Dio Cassius, li. 1; Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, s. v. “Actia.”] Still later the emperor Hadrian instituted quadriennial games at Mantinea in honour of his dead favourite Antinous.[278 - Pausanias, viii. 9. 8.] But in regard to the two greatest of all the Greek games, the Olympian and the Pythian, I have shewn reasons for thinking that they were originally celebrated at intervals of eight instead of four years; certainly this is attested for the Pythian games,[279 - Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth., Argument, p. 298, ed. Aug. Boeckh; Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 6. According to the scholiast on Pindar (l. c.) the change from the octennial to the quadriennial period was occasioned by the nymphs of Parnassus bringing ripe fruits in their hands to Apollo, after he had slain the dragon at Delphi.] and the mode of calculating the Olympiads by alternate periods of fifty and forty-nine lunar months,[280 - Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 35 (20), p. 98, ed. Aug. Boeckh. Compare Boeckh's commentary on Pindar (vol. iii. p. 138 of his edition); L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 366 sq., ii. 605 sqq.] which added together make up eight solar years, seems to prove that the Olympic cycle of four years was really based on a cycle of eight years, from which it is natural to infer that in the beginning the Olympic, like the Pythian, games may have been octennial instead of quadriennial.[281 - See The Dying God, chapter ii. § 4, “Octennial Tenure of the Kingship,” especially pp. 68 sq., 80, 89 sq.] Now we know from the testimony of the ancients themselves that the Greeks instituted the eight-years' cycle for the purpose of harmonising solar and lunar time.[282 - Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, viii. 25 sqq., pp. 110 sqq., ed. C. Manitius (Leipsic, 1898); Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 2-6.] They regulated their calendar primarily by observation of the moon rather than of the sun; their months were lunar, and their ordinary year consisted of twelve lunar months. But the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days exceeds the lunar year of twelve lunar months or three hundred and fifty-four days by eleven and a quarter days, so that in eight solar years the excess amounts to ninety days or roughly three lunar months. Accordingly the Greeks equated eight solar years to eight lunar years of twelve months each by intercalating three lunar months of thirty days each in the octennial cycle; they intercalated one lunar month in the third year of the cycle, a second lunar month in the fifth year, and a third lunar month in the eighth year.[283 - Geminus, l. c.] In this way they, so to say, made the sun and moon keep time together by reckoning ninety-nine lunar months as equivalent to eight solar years; so that if, for example, the full moon coincided with the summer solstice in one year, it coincided with it again after the revolution of the eight years' cycle, but not before. The equation was indeed not quite exact, and in order to render it so the Greeks afterwards found themselves obliged, first, to intercalate three days every sixteen years, and, next, to omit one intercalary month in every period of one hundred and sixty years.[284 - Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, viii. 36-41.] But these corrections were doubtless refinements of a later age; they may have been due to the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus, or to Cleostratus of Tenedos, who were variously, but incorrectly, supposed to have instituted the octennial cycle.[285 - Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 5. As Eudoxus flourished in the fourth century b. c., some sixty or seventy years after Meton, who introduced the nineteen years' cycle to remedy the defects of the octennial cycle, the claim of Eudoxus to have instituted the latter cycle may at once be put out of court. The claim of Cleostratus, who seems to have lived in the sixth or fifth century b. c., cannot be dismissed so summarily; but for the reasons given in the text he can hardly have done more than suggest corrections or improvements of the ancient octennial cycle.] There are strong grounds for holding that in its simplest form the octennial cycle of ninety-nine lunar months dates from an extremely remote antiquity in Greece; that it was in fact, as a well-informed Greek writer tell us,[286 - Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, viii. 27. With far less probability Censorinus (De die natali, xviii. 2-4) supposes that the octennial cycle was produced by the successive duplication of biennial and quadriennial cycles. See below, pp. 86 sq.] the first systematic attempt to bring solar and the lunar time into harmony. Indeed, if the Olympiads were calculated, as they appear to have been, on the eight years' cycle, this of itself suffices to place the origin of the cycle not later than 776 b. c., the year with which the reckoning by Olympiads begins. And when we bear in mind the very remote period from which, judged by the wonderful remains of Mycenae, Tiryns, Cnossus and other cities, civilisation in Greek lands appears to date, it seems reasonable to suppose that the octennial cycle, based as it was on very simple observations, for which nothing but good eyes and almost no astronomical knowledge was necessary,[287 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, ii. 605.] may have been handed down among the inhabitants of these countries from ages that preceded by many centuries, possibly by thousands of years, the great period of Greek literature and art. The supposition is confirmed by the traces which the octennial cycle has left of itself in certain ancient Greek customs and superstitions, particularly by the evidence which points to the conclusion that at two of the oldest seats of monarchy in Greece, namely Cnossus and Sparta, the king's tenure of office was formerly limited to eight years.[288 - The Dying God, pp. 58 sqq. Speaking of the octennial cycle Censorinus observes that “Ob hoc in Graecia multae religiones hoc intervallo temporis summa caerimonia coluntur” (De die natali, xviii. 6). Compare L. Ideler, op. cit. ii. 605 sq.; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, i.

732 sq. The great age and the wide diffusion of the octennial cycle in Greece are rightly maintained by A. Schmidt (Handbuch der griechischen Chronologie, Jena, 1888, pp. 61 sqq.), who suggests that the cycle may have owed something to the astronomy of the Egyptians, with whom the inhabitants of Greece are known to have had relations from a very early time.]

The motive for instituting the eight years' cycle was religious, not practical or scientific.

We are informed, and may readily believe, that the motive which led the Greeks to adopt the eight years' cycle was religious rather than practical or scientific: their aim was not so much to ensure the punctual despatch of business or to solve an abstract problem in astronomy, as to ascertain the exact days on which they ought to sacrifice to the gods. For the Greeks regularly employed lunar months in their reckonings,[289 - Aratus, Phaenomena, 733 sqq.; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 255 sq.] and accordingly if they had dated their religious festivals simply by the number of the month and the day of the month, the excess of eleven and a quarter days of the solar over the lunar year would have had the effect of causing the festivals gradually to revolve throughout the whole circle of the seasons, so that in time ceremonies which properly belonged to winter would come to be held in summer, and on the contrary ceremonies which were only appropriate to summer would come to be held in winter. To avoid this anomaly, and to ensure that festivals dated by lunar months should fall at fixed or nearly fixed points in the solar year, the Greeks adopted the octennial cycle by the simple expedient of intercalating three lunar months in every period of eight years. In doing so they acted, as one of their writers justly pointed out, on a principle precisely the reverse of that followed by the ancient Egyptians, who deliberately regulated their religious festivals by a purely lunar calendar for the purpose of allowing them gradually to revolve throughout the whole circle of the seasons.[290 - Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, viii. 15-45.]

In early times the regulation of the calendar is largely an affair of religion.

Thus at an early stage of culture the regulation of the calendar is largely an affair of religion: it is a means of maintaining the established relations between gods and men on a satisfactory footing; and in public opinion the great evil of a disordered calendar is not so much that it disturbs and disarranges the ordinary course of business and the various transactions of civil life, as that it endangers the welfare or even the existence both of individuals and of the community by interrupting their normal intercourse with those divine powers on whose favour men believe themselves to be absolutely dependent. Hence in states which take this view of the deep religious import of the calendar its superintendence is naturally entrusted to priests rather than to astronomers, because the science of astronomy is regarded merely as ancillary to the deeper mysteries of theology. For example, at Rome the method of determining the months and regulating the festivals was a secret which the pontiffs for ages jealously guarded from the profane vulgar; and in consequence of their ignorance and incapacity the calendar fell into confusion and the festivals were celebrated out of their natural seasons, until the greatest of all the Roman pontiffs, Julius Caesar, remedied the confusion and placed the calendar of the civilised world on the firm foundation on which, with little change, it stands to this day.[291 - Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 15. 9 sqq.; Livy, ix. 46. 5; Valerius Maximus, ii. 5. 2; Cicero, Pro Muraena, xi. 25; id., De legibus, ii. 12. 29; Suetonius, Divus Iulius, 40; Plutarch, Caesar, 59.]

The quadriennial period of games and festivals in Greece was probably arrived at by bisecting an older octennial period.

On the whole, then, it appears probable that the octennial cycle, based on considerations of religion and on elementary observations of the two great luminaries, dated from a very remote period among the ancient Greeks; if they did not bring it with them when they migrated southwards from the oakwoods and beechwoods of Central Europe, they may well have taken it over from their civilised predecessors of different blood and different language whom they found leading a settled agricultural life on the lands about the Aegean Sea. Now we have seen reasons to hold that the two most famous of the great Greek games, the Pythian and the Olympian, were both based on the ancient cycle of eight years, and that the quadriennial period at which they were regularly celebrated in historical times was arrived at by a subdivision of the older octennial cycle. It is hardly rash, therefore, to conjecture that the quadriennial period in general, regarded as the normal period for the celebration of great games and festivals, was originally founded on elementary religious and astronomical considerations of the same kind, that is, on a somewhat crude attempt to harmonise the discrepancies of solar and lunar time and thereby to ensure the continued favour of the gods. It is, indeed, certain or probable that some of these quadriennial festivals were celebrated in honour of the dead;[292 - See The Dying God, pp. 92 sqq.] but there seems to be nothing in the beliefs or customs of the ancient Greeks concerning the dead which would suggest a quadriennial period as an appropriate one for propitiating the ghosts of the departed. At first sight it is different with the octennial period; for according to Pindar, the souls of the dead who had been purged of their guilt by an abode of eight years in the nether world were born again on earth in the ninth year as glorious kings, athletes, and sages.[293 - Plato, Meno, p. 81 a-c; Pindar, ed. Aug. Boeckh, vol. iii. pp. 623 sq., Frag. 98. See further The Dying God, pp. 69 sq.] Now if this belief in the reincarnation of the dead after eight years were primitive, it might certainly furnish an excellent reason for honouring the ghosts of great men at their graves every eight years in order to facilitate their rebirth into the world. Yet the period of eight years thus rigidly applied to the life of disembodied spirits appears too arbitrary and conventional to be really primitive, and we may suspect that in this application it was nothing but an inference drawn from the old octennial cycle, which had been instituted for the purpose of reconciling solar and lunar time. If that was so, it will follow that the quadriennial period of funeral games was, like the similar period of other religious festivals, obtained through the bisection of the octennial cycle, and hence that it was ultimately derived from astronomical considerations rather than from any beliefs touching a quadriennial revolution in the state of the dead. Yet in historical times it may well have happened that these considerations were forgotten, and that games and festivals were instituted at quadriennial intervals, for example at Plataea[294 - Plutarch, Aristides, 21; Pausanias, ix. 2. 6.] in honour of the slain, at Actium to commemorate the great victory, and at Mantinea in honour of Antinous,[295 - See above, p. 80 (#x_10_i13).] without any conscious reference to the sun and moon, and merely because that period had from time immemorial been regarded as the proper and normal one for the celebration of certain solemn religious rites.

The reasons for bisecting the old octennial period into two quadriennial periods may have been partly religious, partly political.

If we enquire why the Greeks so often bisected the old octennial period into two quadriennial periods for purposes of religion, the answer can only be conjectural, for no positive information appears to be given us on the subject by ancient writers. Perhaps they thought that eight years was too long a time to elapse between the solemn services, and that it was desirable to propitiate the deities at shorter intervals. But it is possible that political as well as religious motives may have operated to produce the change. We have seen reason to think that at two of the oldest seats of monarchy in Greece, namely Cnossus and Sparta, kings formerly held office for periods of eight years only, after which their sovereignty either terminated or had to be formally renewed. Now with the gradual growth of that democratic sentiment, which ultimately dominated Greek political life, men would become more and more jealous of the kingly power and would seek to restrict it within narrower limits, and one of the most obvious means of doing so was to shorten the king's tenure of office. We know that this was done at Athens, where the dynasty of the Medontids was reduced from the rank of monarchs for life to that of magistrates holding office for ten years only.[296 - Pausanias, iv. 5. 10; compare Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, iii. 1; G. Gilbert, Handbuch der griechischen Staatsalterthumer, i.

(Leipsic, 1893) pp. 122 sq.] It is possible that elsewhere the king's reign was cut down from eight years to four years; and if I am right in my explanation of the origin of the Olympic games this political revolution actually took place at Olympia, where the victors in the chariot-race would seem at first to have personated the Sun-god and perhaps held office in the capacity of divine kings during the intervals between successive celebrations of the games.[297 - See The Dying God, pp. 89-92.] If at Olympia and elsewhere the games were of old primarily contests in which the king had personally to take part for the purpose of attesting his bodily vigour and therefore his capacity for office, the repetition of the test at intervals of four instead of eight years might be regarded as furnishing a better guarantee of the maintenance of the king's efficiency and thereby of the general welfare, which in primitive society is often supposed to be sympathetically bound up with the health and strength of the king.

The biennial period of some Greek games may have been obtained by bisecting the quadriennial period.

But while many of the great Greek games were celebrated at intervals of four years, others, such as the Nemean and the Isthmian, were celebrated at intervals of two years only; and just as the quadriennial period seems to have been arrived at through a bisection of the octennial period, so we may surmise that the biennial period was produced by a bisection of the quadriennial period. This was the view which the admirable modern chronologer L. Ideler took of the origin of the quadriennial and biennial festivals respectively,[298 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, ii. 606 sq.] and it appears far more probable than the contrary opinion of the ancient chronologer Censorinus, that the quadriennial period was reached by doubling the biennial, and the octennial period by doubling the quadriennial.[299 - Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 2-4.] The theory of Censorinus was that the Greeks started with a biennial cycle of twelve and thirteen lunar months alternately in successive years for the purpose of harmonising solar and lunar time.[300 - Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 2.] But as the cycle so produced exceeds the true solar time by seven and a half days,[301 - L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 270.] the discrepancy which it leaves between the two great celestial clocks, the sun and moon, was too glaring to escape the observation even of simple farmers, who would soon have been painfully sensible that the times were out of joint, if they had attempted to regulate the various operations of the agricultural year by reference to so very inaccurate an almanac. It is unlikely, therefore, that the Greeks ever made much use of a biennial cycle of this sort.

Application of the foregoing conclusion to the Eleusinian games.

Now to apply these conclusions to the Eleusinian games, which furnished the starting-point for the preceding discussion. Whatever the origin and meaning of these games may have been, we may surmise that the quadriennial and biennial periods at which they were held were originally derived from astronomical considerations, and that they had nothing to do directly either with the agricultural cycle, which is annual, nor with the worship of the dead, which can scarcely be said to have any cycle at all, unless indeed it be an annual one. In other words, neither the needs of husbandry nor the superstitions relating to ghosts furnish any natural explanation of the quadriennial and biennial periods of the Eleusinian games, and to discover such an explanation we are obliged to fall back on astronomy or, to be more exact, on that blend of astronomy with religion which appears to be mainly responsible for such Greek festivals as exceed a year in their period. To admit this is not to decide the question whether the Eleusinian games were agricultural or funereal in character; but it is implicitly to acknowledge that the games were of later origin than the annual ceremonies, including the Great Mysteries, which were designed to propitiate the deities of the corn for the very simple and practical purpose of ensuring good crops within the year. For it cannot but be that men observed and laid their account with the annual changes of the seasons, especially as manifested by the growth and maturity of the crops, long before they attempted to reconcile the discrepancies of solar and lunar time by a series of observations extending over several years.

Varro on the rites of Eleusis.

On the whole, then, if, ignoring theories, we adhere to the evidence of the ancients themselves in regard to the rites of Eleusis, including under that general term the Great Mysteries, the games, the Festival before Ploughing (proerosia), the Festival of the Threshing-floor, the Green Festival, the Festival of the Cornstalks, and the offerings of first-fruits, we shall probably incline to agree with the most learned of ancient antiquaries, the Roman Varro, who, to quote Augustine's report of his opinion, “interpreted the whole of the Eleusinian mysteries as relating to the corn which Ceres (Demeter) had discovered, and to Proserpine (Persephone), whom Pluto had carried off from her. And Proserpine herself, he said, signifies the fecundity of the seeds, the failure of which at a certain time had caused the earth to mourn for barrenness, and therefore had given rise to the opinion that the daughter of Ceres, that is, fecundity itself, had been ravished by Pluto and detained in the nether world; and when the dearth had been publicly mourned and fecundity had returned once more, there was gladness at the return of Proserpine and solemn rites were instituted accordingly. After that he says,” continues Augustine, reporting Varro, “that many things were taught in her mysteries which had no reference but to the discovery of the corn.”[302 - Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 20. “In Cereris autem sacris praedicantur illa Eleusinia, quae apud Athenienses nobilissima fuerunt. De quibus iste [Varro] nihil interpretatur, nisi quod attinet ad frumentum, quod Ceres invenit, et ad Proserpinam, quam rapiente Orco perdidit. Et hanc ipsam dicit significare foecunditatem seminum… Dicit deinde multa in mysteriis ejus tradi, quae nisi ad frugum inventionem non pertineant.”]

The close resemblance between the artistic types of Demeter and Persephone militates against the theory that the two goddesses personified two things so different as the earth and the corn.

Thus far I have for the most part assumed an identity of nature between Demeter and Persephone, the divine mother and daughter personifying the corn in its double aspect of the seed-corn of last year and the ripe ears of this, and I pointed out that this view of the substantial unity of mother and daughter is borne out by their portraits in Greek art, which are often so alike as to be indistinguishable. Such a close resemblance between the artistic types of Demeter and Persephone militates decidedly against the view that the two goddesses are mythical embodiments of two things so different and so easily distinguishable from each other as the earth and the vegetation which springs from it. Had Greek artists accepted that view of Demeter and Persephone, they could surely have devised types of them which would have brought out the deep distinction between the goddesses. That they were capable of doing so is proved by the simple fact that they regularly represented the Earth Goddess by a type which differed widely both from that of Demeter and from that of Persephone.[303 - A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des classischen Altertums, i. 577 sq.; Drexler, s. v. "Gaia," in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. 1574 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) p. 27.] Not only so, but they sometimes set the two types of the Earth Goddess and the Corn Goddess (Demeter) side by side as if on purpose to demonstrate their difference. Thus at Patrae there was a sanctuary of Demeter, in which she and Persephone were portrayed standing, while Earth was represented by a seated image;[304 - Pausanias, vii. 21. 11. At Athens there was a sanctuary of Earth the Nursing-Mother and of Green Demeter (Pausanias, i. 22. 3), but we do not know how the goddesses were represented.] and on a vase-painting the Earth Goddess is seen appropriately emerging from the ground with a horn of plenty and an infant in her uplifted arms, while Demeter and Persephone, scarcely distinguishable from each other, stand at full height behind her, looking down at her half-buried figure, and Triptolemus in his wheeled car sits directly above her.[305 - L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 256 with plate xxi. b.] In this instructive picture, accordingly, we see grouped together the principal personages in the myth of the corn: the Earth Goddess, the two Goddesses of the old and the new corn, and the hero who is said to have been sent forth by the Corn Goddess to sow the seed broadcast over the earth. Such representations seem to prove that the artists clearly distinguished Demeter from the Earth Goddess.[306 - The distinction between Demeter (Ceres) and the Earth Goddess is clearly marked by Ovid, Fasti, iv. 673 sq.:“Officium commune Ceres et Terra tuentur;Haec praebet causam frugibus, illa locum.”] And if Demeter did not personify the earth, can there be any reasonable doubt that, like her daughter, she personified the corn which was so commonly called by her name from the time of Homer downwards? The essential identity of mother and daughter is suggested, not only by the close resemblance of their artistic types, but also by the official title of “the Two Goddesses” which was regularly applied to them in the great sanctuary at Eleusis without any specification of their individual attributes and titles,[307 - Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,

Nos. 20, 408, 411, 587, 646, 647, 652, 720, 789. Compare the expression διώνυμοι θέαι applied to them by Euripides, Phoenissae, 683, with the Scholiast's note.] as if their separate individualities had almost merged in a single divine substance.[308 - The substantial identity of Demeter and Persephone has been recognised by some modern scholars, though their interpretations of the myth do not altogether agree with the one adopted in the text. See F. G. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre (Göttingen, 1857-1862), ii. 532; L. Preller, in Pauly's Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vi. 106 sq.; F. Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, i. 2. pp. 1047 sqq.]

As goddesses of the corn Demeter and Persephone came to be associated with the ideas of death and resurrection.

Surveying the evidence as a whole, we may say that from the myth of Demeter and Persephone, from their ritual, from their representations in art, from the titles which they bore, from the offerings of first-fruits which were presented to them, and from the names applied to the cereals, we are fairly entitled to conclude that in the mind of the ordinary Greek the two goddesses were essentially personifications of the corn, and that in this germ the whole efflorescence of their religion finds implicitly its explanation. But to maintain this is not to deny that in the long course of religious evolution high moral and spiritual conceptions were grafted on this simple original stock and blossomed out into fairer flowers than the bloom of the barley and the wheat. Above all, the thought of the seed buried in the earth in order to spring up to new and higher life readily suggested a comparison with human destiny, and strengthened the hope that for man too the grave may be but the beginning of a better and happier existence in some brighter world unknown. This simple and natural reflection seems perfectly sufficient to explain the association of the Corn Goddess at Eleusis with the mystery of death and the hope of a blissful immortality. For that the ancients regarded initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries as a key to unlock the gates of Paradise appears to be proved by the allusions which well-informed writers among them drop to the happiness in store for the initiated hereafter.[309 - Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 480 sqq.; Pindar, quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Strom. iii. 3. 17, p. 518, ed. Potter; Sophocles, quoted by Plutarch, De audiendis poetis, 4; Isocrates, Panegyricus, 6; Cicero, De legibus, ii. 14. 36; Aristides, Eleusin. vol. i. p. 421, ed. G. Dindorf.] No doubt it is easy for us to discern the flimsiness of the logical foundation on which such high hopes were built.[310 - A learned German professor has thought it worth while to break the poor butterfly argument on the wheel of his inflexible logic. The cruel act, while it proves the hardness of the professor's head, says little for his knowledge of human nature, which does not always act in strict accordance with the impulse of the syllogistic machinery. See Erwin Rohde, Psyche