Demea

“ If you can make out the present point, and prove mankind to be unhappy or corrupted, there is an end at once of all religion. For to what purpose establish the natural attributes of the Deity, while the moral are still doubtful and uncertain?
You take umbrage very easily, replied DEMEA, at opinions the most innocent, and the most generally received, even amongst the religious and devout themselves: and nothing can be more surprising than to find a topic like this, concerning the wickedness and misery of man, charged with no less than Atheism and profaneness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the religion of the Western people, the latter are as essentially concerned with life as with death; and Demeter, Kore-Persephone, Plouton, Zeus Χθόνιος, are benign divinities whose sombre character is only the reverse of the picture; there is a chance of development for a more hopeful creed when the dead are committed to the care of the gentle earth-goddess: and it was through this double aspect of Demeter-Kore that the eschatologic promise of the Greek mysteries was confirmed. ”

“ Before the temple stand a few statues of the women who have served Demeter as her priestess, and on passing inside you see seats on which the old women wait for the cows to be driven in one by one, and images, of no great age, of Athena and Demeter. But the thing itself that they worship more than all else, I never saw, nor yet has any other man, whether stranger or Hermionian. The old women may keep their knowledge of its nature to themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To Demeter, the Earth Mother, was born a daughter more fair than any flower that grew, and ever more dear to her became her child, the lovely Proserpine. By the blue sea, in the Sicilian meadows, Proserpine and the fair nymphs who were her companions spent their happy days. Too short were the days for all their joy, and Demeter made the earth yet fairer than it was that she might bring more gladness to her daughter Proserpine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I remember that evening so well; we could see the stars through the window plainer and plainer as the fire went down, and we could hear the noise of the sea.
"Do you remember in the old myth of Demeter and Persephone," Kate asked me, "where Demeter takes care of the child and gives it ambrosia and hides it in fire, because she loves it and wishes to make it immortal, and to give it eternal youth; and then the mother finds it out and cries in terror to hinder her, and the goddess angrily throws the child down and rushes away? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gæa represents the earth as a whole, with its mighty subterranean forces; Rhea is that productive power which causes vegetation to spring forth, thus sustaining men and animals; Demeter, by presiding over agriculture, directs and utilizes Rhea's productive powers. But in later times, when Rhea, like other ancient divinities, loses her importance as a ruling deity, Demeter assumes all her functions and attributes, and then becomes the goddess of the life-producing and life-maintaining earth-crust. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The conception of Demeter is throughout chiefly human, and even domestic, though never without a hieratic interest, because she is not a goddess only, but also a priestess. In contrast, Persephone is wholly unearthly, the close companion, and even the confused double, of Hecate, the goddess of midnight terrors,—Despoena,—the final mistress of all that lives; and as sorrow is the characteristic sentiment of Demeter, so awe of Persephone. ”

“ The initiation rites of Demeter at Celeae near Phlius, at Lerna in Argolis, and at Naples, were organized after the pattern of the Eleusinian. But of these and the other Demeter mysteries in the Greek world, there is little to record that is certain and at the same time of primary importance for the history of religion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Demeter hastened to the great father Zeus, who could do all things.
She asked him to send to Hades for her daughter. Zeus called Hermes. He bade him go as swiftly as the wind to the home of Hades. Hermes whispered to everything on the way that he was going for Persephone so that all might be ready to welcome her back.
He soon arrived in the kingdom and gave Hades the message from Zeus. He told about the barren earth and of how Demeter was mourning for her child. He said she would not let anything grow until Persephone came back. The people must starve if she did not soon return. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The various epithets of Demeter, the local variations of her story, its incompatible incidents, bear witness to the manner of its generation. They illustrate that indefiniteness which is characteristic of Greek mythology, a theology with no central authority, no link on historic time, liable from the first to an unobserved transformation. They indicate the various, far-distant spots from which the visible body of the goddess slowly collected its constituents, and came at last to have a well-defined existence in the popular mind. ”

“ Then said Demeter: "Foolish indeed are you mortals, and not able to foresee what is to come to you of good or of evil."
"Foolish indeed are you, Metaneira, for in your heedlessness you have cut off this child from an immortality like to the immortality of the gods themselves. For he had lain in my bosom and had become dear to me and I would have bestowed upon him the greatest gift that the Divine Ones can bestow, for I would have made him deathless and unaging. All this, now, has gone by. Honor he shall have indeed, but Demophoon will know age and death." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”