Demas

“ At Eleusis, Demeter was venerated as the introducer of all the blessings which agriculture brings in its train—fixed dwelling-places, civil order, marriage and a peaceful life; hence her name Thesmophoros, “the bringer of law and order,” and the festival Thesmophoria (q.v.) . J. G. Frazer takes the epithet to mean “bearer of the sacred objects deposited on the altar”; L. R. Farnell (Cults of the Greek States, iii. 106) suggests “the bringer of treasure or riches,” as appropriate to the goddess of corn and of the lower world ”

“ Demeter is no longer the subdued goddess of the quietly- ordered fields, but the mother of the gods, who has her abode in the heights of Mount Ida, who presides over the dews and waters of the white springs, whose flocks feed, not on grain, but on the curling tendrils of the vine, both of which she withholds in her anger, and whose chariot is drawn by wild beasts, fruit and emblem of the earth in its fiery strength. ”

“ Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl—a marvellous, radiant flower. ”

“ Yet we mortals bear perforce what the gods send us, though we be grieved; for a yoke is set upon our necks. But now, since you are come here, you shall have what I can bestow: and nurse me this child whom the gods gave me in my old age and beyond my hope, a son much prayed for. If you should bring him up until he reach the full measure of youth, any one of womankind that sees you will straightway envy you, so great reward would I give for his upbringing."
Then rich-haired Demeter answered her: "And to you, also, lady, all hail, and may the gods give you good! ”

“ Broken as they, too, are, the Hymn and the statue are “free among the dead,” and eloquent of the higher religion that, in Greece, attached itself to the lost Maiden and the sorrowing Mother. Demeter, in religion, was more than a fertiliser of the fields: Korê, the Maiden, was more than the buried pig, or the seed sown to await its resurrection; or the harvest idol, fashioned of corn-stalks: more even than a symbol of the winter sleep and vernal awakening of the year and the life of nature. She became the “dread Persephone” of the Odyssey,
“A Queen over death and the dead.” ”

“ Then Demeter was glad, and she caused the grain to grow abundantly for the people of Eleusis, and taught them ceremonies, and a kind of play in which all the story of her sorrows and joy was acted. It was also taught that the souls of men do not die with the death of their bodies, any more than the seed of corn dies when it is buried in the dark earth, but that they live again in a world more happy and beautiful than ours. ”

“ In other words, instead of flattering one man of influence and power with a dedication, as was done by the poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was to install Demos as my patron, must warp the very tissue of my thought to inform the ordinary man that the very fact that he wore overalls, acquired callouses on his hands, and was ignorant and contemptuous of culture—somehow made him a demigod! I was continually to glorify the stupidity of the people, and always append a moral. ”

“ Dembinski, Henry, a Polish general, born near Cracow; served under Napoleon against Russia, under Kossuth against Austria; fled to Turkey on the resignation of Kossuth; died in Paris (1791-1864) .
Demerara, a division of British Guiana; takes its name from the river, which is 200 m. long, and falls into the Atlantic at Georgetown.
Demeter (lit. Earth-mother) , the great Greek goddess of the earth, daughter of Kronos and Rhea and sister of Zeus, and ranks with him as one of the twelve great gods of Olympus; is specially the goddess of agriculture, and the giver of all the earth's fruits ”

“ Then Demeter returned, and sat down within the temple-walls, and remained still apart from the company of the gods, alone in her wasting regret for her daughter Persephone.
"And, in her anger, she sent upon the earth a year of grievous famine. The dry seed remained hidden in the soil; in vain the oxen drew the ploughshare through the furrows; much white seed-corn fell fruitless on the earth, and the whole human race had like to have perished, and the gods had no more service of men, unless Zeus had interfered. ”

“ The thought of Demeter is impressed here, with all the purity and proportion, the purged and dainty intelligence of the human countenance. The mystery of it is indeed absent, perhaps could hardly have been looked for in so slight a thing, intended for no sacred purpose, and tossed lightly from hand to hand. But in his firm hold on the harmonies of the human face, the designer of this tranquil head of [139] Demeter is on the one road to a command over the secrets of all imaginative pathos and mystery ”

“ In the story of Demeter, as in all Greek myths, we may trace the action of three different influences, which have moulded it with varying effects, in three successive phases of its development. There is first its half-conscious, instinctive, or mystical, phase, in which, under the form of an unwritten legend, living from mouth to mouth, and with details changing as it passes from place to place, there lie certain primitive impressions of the phenomena of the natural world. ”

“ Pray to Zeus of the Earth and to pure Demeter to make Demeter’s holy grain sound and heavy, when first you begin ploughing, when you hold in your hand the end of the plough-tail and bring down your stick on the backs of the oxen as they draw on the pole-bar by the yoke-straps. Let a slave follow a little behind with a mattock and make trouble for the birds by hiding the seed; for good management is the best for mortal men as bad management is the worst. ”

“ Your father commissioned us to create peaceful Demeter, the patroness of agriculture, peace, marriage, and Arachne, the mortal who was the most skilful of spinners; for he is both a grain dealer and owner of spinning factories. The best Demeter is to be placed in the Alexandrian temple of the goddess, to whose priestesses you belong; the less successful one in your own house in the city, but whose Demeter is destined for the sanctuary, I repeat, is now virtually decided. Myrtilus will add this prize to the others, and grant me with all his heart the one for the Arachne. ”

“ But he spoke to deaf ears and won only looks of new-born suspicion.
‘It is the custom of the island,’ they growled. ‘It has been done in Neopalia time out of mind.’
‘Yes,’ said the priest. ‘Time out of mind has a man been free to ask this oath of whomsoever he suspected. Swear, Demetri, as our Lady and our law bid.’ And he ended the words of the oath.
Demetri looked round to right, to left, and to right again. He sought escape. There was none; his way was barred. His arms fell by his side. ”

“ It seems hardly to be disputed that Demeter is Greek, and means mother-earth or earth the mother. [254] There is nothing peculiarly Hellenic or Aryan in the adoration of earth. A comparative study of earth-worship would prove it to be very widely diffused, even among non-European tribes. The Demeter cult, however, is distinct enough from the myth of Gæa, the Earth, considered as, in conjunction with Heaven, the parent of the gods. Demeter is rather the fruitful soil regarded as a person than the elder Titanic formless earth personified as Gæa. ”

“ When it was dark, the three demis returned. One of the sisters went out to meet them, and said: ‘My brother is come.’ The demis answered: ‘If the elder brothers are come, we can make roast meat of them, if it be the youngest, we shall know how to do him honour.’ The demis went in, and kissed the youth for joy at meeting him.
As they were all sitting round the hearth, the demis began to sigh deeply. The youth asked them: ‘Why do you sigh?’ ‘Why?—we are sorry for that poor damsel! Kazha-Ndii-Kerkun (i.e. the swift, flint-like demi) was carrying through the air a golden-haired woman ”

“ When the drama of Demeter and Kore was played before the eyes of the initiated at Eleusis, were not they too uplifted in mind until amid the magic of night they were no longer spectators of a drama but themselves had a share in Demeter’s sorrow and wandering and joy? For the pagan story is not unlike the Christian story in its power to move both tears and gladness. As now men mourn beside the bier of Christ, so in old time may men have shared Demeter’s mourning for her child who though divine had suffered the lot of men and passed away to the House of Hades. ”

“ Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as the mother and author of life [5] ) was in the ancient Pelasgic time honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity; but the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other gods of Olympus. ”

“ And some of the people whom he used to rebuke for their sins would say among themselves, “This man is married, and his wife is with him at this present, why should he rebuke us especially? None but a virgin should be appointed to the throne of Mark the evangelist.” One night an angel of the Lord came to him and said unto him, “Demetrius, permit not thyself only to do as thou pleases, and permit not thy neighbor to be destroyed. ”

“ If persons of fastidious taste should object that the Greeks never could have conceived Demeter and Persephone to be embodied in the form of pigs, it may be answered that in the cave of Phigalia in Arcadia the Black Demeter was portrayed with the head and mane of a horse on the body of a woman. Between the portraits of a goddess as a pig, and the portrait of her as a woman with a horse's head, there is little to choose in respect of barbarism. ”

“ But I am not less an artist than a human being, and when I think of Demos, that chin-bearded god, flushed with victory, crowned with leaflets of the Social Democratic League, quaffing temperance beverages in a world all drab ”

“ Then daylight came and the statue in turn assumed the living rose colour of the dawn and the golden tint of the sunlight.
Demetrios could no longer think. The ivory comb and the silver mirror which he carried within his tunic had disappeared from his memory. He gently abandoned himself to serene contemplation.
Outside the confused singing and twittering of the birds sounded in the gardens. The talking and laughing of women’s voices could be heard outside the walls. The life and movement of the morning was spreading over the awakened land. Demetrios was full of pleasant ideas. ”

“ Then followed a moment’s utter silence, broken an instant later by an irresistible outbreak of wondering cries, for Demetri said, ‘Follow me,’ and turned and began to walk in the direction of the town. ‘Follow me,’ he said again. ‘I will tell the truth. I have served my lord well, but a man’s soul is his own. No master buys a man’s soul. I will tell the truth.’
[Pg 208]
The change in feeling was witnessed by what happened. At a sign from the priest Kortes and another each took one of Constantine’s arms and raised him. ”

“ The Thesmophoria formed the great festival of Demeter and her daughter Korê, though here again Demeter appears with a clinging epithet, Thesmophoros. We know pretty clearly the whole course of the ritual: there is the carrying by women of certain magic charms, fir-cones and snakes and unnameable objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there is a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over the fields. ”

“ In the way of society, it must be confessed, her privileges were meagre, Sir Arthur Demesne and her two compatriots being, so far as the latter could discover, her only visitors. She might have had other friends, but she held her head very high, and liked better to see no one than not to see the best company. It was evident that she flattered herself that she produced the effect of being, not neglected, but fastidious. ”

“ Demus.—A personification of the Athenian people, the John Bull of Athens, a testy, selfish, suspicious old man, a tyrant to his slaves, with the exception of one (a new acquisition) , the Paphlagonian—Cleon, by whom he is cajoled and governed.
Nicias and Demosthenes.—The two most fortunate and able generals of the republic, of very opposite characters; the one cautious and superstitious in the extreme; the other a blunt, hearty, resolute, jolly fellow, a very decided lover of good wine. These two, the servants of the public, are naturally introduced as the slaves of Demus. ”

“ So soon as the Chorus has expressed its high satisfaction, Cleon enters, and the war of words is renewed with equal spirit, till he calls upon Demus to appear, and see what ill treatment he suffers on his account. Demus hears the candidates for his favour, and resolves to call an assembly to decide on their claims; but he insists that it shall be held in his proper seat, the Pnyx, to the dismay of the sausage–seller, who exclaims that he is ruined; since Demus, though a clever fellow anywhere else, is a gaping ninny when he gets on one of those stone benches. ”

“ And I would have you all to know that Democles, the orator, became the father of Demeas, by a female flute-player who was a courtesan; and once when he, Demeas, was giving himself airs in the tribune, Hyperides stopped his mouth, saying, "Will not you be silent, young man? why, you make more puffing than your mother did." And also Bion of the Borysthenes, the philosopher, was the son of a Lacedæmonian courtesan named Olympia; as Nicias the Nicæan informs us in his treatise called the Successions of the Philosophers. ”