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

The Yellow Demeter, the goddess who sifts the ripe grain from the chaff at the threshing-floor. The Green Demeter the goddess of the green corn.

With this conclusion all the indications of the hymn-writer seem to harmonise. He certainly represents Demeter as the goddess by whose power and at whose pleasure the corn either grows or remains hidden in the ground; and to what deity can such powers be so fittingly ascribed as to the goddess of the corn? He calls Demeter yellow and tells how her yellow tresses flowed down on her shoulders; 145 145 Hymn to Demeter , 279, 302. could any colour be more appropriate with which to paint the divinity of the yellow grain? The same identification of Demeter with the ripe, the yellow corn is made even more clearly by a still older poet, Homer himself, or at all events the author of the fifth book of the Iliad . There we read: “And even as the wind carries the chaff about the sacred threshing-floors, when men are winnowing, what time yellow Demeter sifts the corn from the chaff on the hurrying blast, so that the heaps of chaff grow white below, so were the Achaeans whitened above by the cloud of dust which the hoofs of the horses spurned to the brazen heaven.” 146 146 Homer, Iliad , v. 499-504. Here the yellow Demeter who sifts the grain from the chaff at the threshing-floor can hardly be any other than the goddess of the yellow corn; she cannot be the Earth-goddess, for what has the Earth-goddess to do with the grain and the chaff blown about a threshing-floor? With this interpretation it agrees that elsewhere Homer speaks of men eating “Demeter's corn”; 147 147 Iliad , xiii. 322, xxi. 76. and still more definitely Hesiod speaks of “the annual store of food, which the earth bears, Demeter's corn,” 148 148 Hesiod, Works and Days , 31 sq. thus distinguishing the goddess of the corn from the earth which bears it. Still more clearly does a later Greek poet personify the corn as Demeter when, in allusion to the time of the corn-reaping, he says that then “the sturdy swains cleave Demeter limb from limb.” 149 149 Quoted by Plutarch, Isis et Osiris , 66. And just as the ripe or yellow corn was personified as the Yellow Demeter, so the unripe or green corn was personified as the Green Demeter. In that character the goddess had sanctuaries at Athens and other places; sacrifices were appropriately offered to Green Demeter in spring when the earth was growing green with the fresh vegetation, and the victims included sows big with young, 150 150 Pausanias, i. 22. 3 with my note; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 No. 615; J. de Prott et L. Ziehen, Leges Graecorum Sacrae , Fasciculus I. (Leipsic, 1896) p. 49; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium , 28; Scholiast on Sophocles, Oedipus Colon. 1600; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , iii. 312 sq. which no doubt were intended not merely to symbolise but magically to promote the abundance of the crops.

The cereals called “Demeter's fruits.”

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

Corn and poppies as symbols of Demeter.

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