Demos

“ 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. ”

“ But let us all give him the chance to become that philosopher-king who according to an ancient dream was to be the fit ruler, or rulers, of the people. The hopeful sign is that Demos himself perceives his lack, and clamours for the humanistic education in which he sees his salvation. ”

“ For ‘Arry represented a very large section of Demos, alike in his natural characteristics and in the circumstances of his position; ‘Arry, being ‘Arry, was on the threshold of emancipation, and without the smallest likelihood that the event would change his nature. ”

“ The same energy in the Greek Demos drew the remark, that the evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens. ”

“ The demos, for political purposes, has always excluded women, minors, resident aliens, slaves, paupers, felons, etc., according to the constitution in each case; the "people," therefore, has always meant some defined section of the population, not the whole of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A feeble frame and a weak voice, a shy and awkward manner, the ungraceful gesticulations of one whose limbs had never been duly exercised, and a defective articulation, would have deterred most men from even attempting to address an Athenian assembly; but the ambition and perseverance of Demosthenes enabled him to triumph over every disadvantage. ”

“ In his celebrated dialogues—Crito, Gorgias, Phaedo, Phaedrus, the Symposium, most of all perhaps in the Republic—we see what splendour, what elasticity, what exactitude, this means of expression had in so short a time developed; how little there was for future prose-writers in any age to learn about their business. The rhetoricians were even more highly admired by the critics of antiquity than the philosophers, and it is probable that ancient opinion would have set Demosthenes higher than Plato as a composer of prose. ”

“ Why do you tell us now of the alleged iniquities of Demosthenes, instead of accusing him when his report was under examination? For such an omission alone you deserve to perish. 336 Do not speak of the beauty of peace, nor of its advantages. No one holds you responsible for the city's having made peace. But show that it was not a shameful and discreditable peace; that we have not since been deceived in many ways ”

“ The power of Demosthenes in delivery seems to have been equal to his skill in argument and his clearness and felicity of expression—the result of marvellous patience and perseverance in the face of difficulties which would have seemed to most men to be insuperable, arising from defective articulation, a weak voice, short breath and an awkward manner. ”

“ Before setting out he persuaded the citizens to pass sentence of death upon Demosthenes and his followers, who had fled from Athens. The result of his embassy was the conclusion of a peace greatly to the disadvantage of the Athenians. ”

“ Demosthenes studied under Isaeus and profited by the work previously done by the great rhetoricians and orators, Lysias, Isocrates, Antiphon, and others. Demosthenes’ political morality was of the highest, and this was one of the main sources of his great strength.
Speech of Demosthenes in Defense of Ctesiphon, Commonly known as the “Oration on the Crown.” I begin, men of Athens, by praying to every god and goddess that the same good-will, which I have ever cherished toward the commonwealth and all of you, may be requited to me on the present trial. ”

“ Among the many public speakers who opposed him, Demosthenes, for example, once told him, "The Athenians, Phocion, will kill you some day when they once are in a rage." ”

“ But what are thought and commonly said most to demonstrate and try the tempers of men, namely, authority and place, by moving every passion, and discovering every frailty, these are things which Demosthenes never received; ”

“ Hence, when these men praised Philip as being more eloquent, more handsome, and to crown all, able to drink more than any one else, Demosthenes sneeringly 132 replied that the first of these qualities was excellent in a sophist, the second in a woman, and the third in a sponge, but that they were none of them such as became a king. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ True, mankind had collected and co-ordinated a few million facts unknown to the men and women who worshipped and sacrificed in the Temple of Demeter, but, after all, what are facts? Are they not the very masks of truth, as a man’s face is the mask of his soul?...
Almost could I see her in the divine Temple, worshipped and feared.... Woman enthroned; man on his knees, craving a boon. Woman in league with Nature: man Nature’s victim. Woman accepting; man giving....
I dressed, and ate the food I had brought with me. The wine enervated me, and soon I slept. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was the superstitious feeling I have before mentioned that induced me to consult the Oracle of the Sweet Waters as to how my young passion for Demetrius would thrive; and I returned from my enquiry disconsolate and overpowered, as all the answers of the oracle turned out unfavourable to my hopes. Under the dominion of a long cherished superstition, handed down from generation to generation, and sanctioned by the examples of all around, I would as soon have thought of counteracting the declared decrees of providence as of cherishing a hope in opposition to the oracle. ”

“ 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 ”

“ For when a man charges me—I call Heaven and Earth to witness!—with philippizing, what will he not say? By Heracles and all the gods, if one had to inquire truthfully, setting aside all calumny and all expression of animosity, who are in reality the men upon whose heads all would naturally and justly lay the blame for what has taken place, you would find that it was those in each city who resemble Aeschines, not those who resemble me. ”

“ Demeter, who presidest over the pure mysteries, help us and protect thy choruses; far from all danger, may I continually yield myself to sports and dancing, mingle laughter with seriousness, as is fitting at thy festivals, and as the reward for my biting sarcasms may I wreathe my head with the triumphal fillets. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Let Demea's principles be improved and cultivated: Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in subjects of common life and practice: Let the errors and deceits of our very senses be set before us; the insuperable difficulties which attend first principles in all systems ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tennyson, Demeter and Persephone; Mrs. H. H. Jackson, Demeter. Prose: W. H. Pater, The Myth of Demeter (Fortn. Rev. Vol. 25, 1876) ; S. Colvin, A Greek Hymn (Cornh. Mag. Vol. 33, 1876) ; Swinburne, At Eleusis.
The name Ceres is from the stem cer, Sanskrit kri, 'to make.' By metonomy the word comes to signify corn in the Latin. Demeter (Γῆ μήτηρ, δᾶ μάτηρ) means Mother Earth. The goddess is represented in art crowned with a wheat-measure (or modius) , and bearing a horn of plenty filled with ears of corn. Demeter (?) appears in the group of deities on the eastern frieze of the Parthenon. ”