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

Persephone portrayed as the young corn sprouting from the ground.

Nowhere, perhaps, in the monuments of Greek art is the character of Persephone as a personification of the young corn sprouting in spring portrayed more gracefully and more truly than on a coin of Lampsacus of the fourth century before our era. On it we see the goddess in the very act of rising from the earth. “Her face is upraised; in her hand are three ears of corn, and others together with grapes are springing behind her shoulder. Complete is here the identification of the goddess and her attribute: she is embowered amid the ears of growing corn, and like it half buried in the ground. She does not make the corn and vine grow, but she is the corn and vine growing, and returning again to the face of the earth after lying hidden in its depths. Certainly the artist who designed this beautiful figure thoroughly understood Hellenic religion.” 159 159 Percy Gardner, Types of Greek Coins (Cambridge, 1883), p. 174, with plate x. No. 25.

Demeter invoked and propitiated by Greek farmers before the autumnal sowing. Boeotian festival of mourning for the descent of Persephone at the autumnal sowing.

As the goddess who first bestowed corn on mankind and taught them to sow and cultivate it, 160 160 Diodorus Siculus, v. 68. 1. Demeter was naturally invoked and propitiated by farmers before they undertook the various operations of the agricultural year. In autumn, when he heard the sonorous trumpeting of the cranes, as they winged their way southward in vast flocks high overhead, the Greek husbandman knew that the rains were near and that the time of ploughing was at hand; but before he put his hand to the plough he prayed to Underground Zeus and to Holy Demeter for a heavy crop of Demeter's sacred corn. Then he guided the ox-drawn plough down the field, turning up the brown earth with the share, while a swain followed close behind with a hoe, who covered up the seed as fast as it fell to protect it from the voracious birds that fluttered and twittered at the plough-tail. 161 161 Hesiod, Works and Days , 448-474; Epictetus, Dissertationes , iii. 21. 12. For the autumnal migration and clangour of the cranes as the signal for sowing, see Aristophanes, Birds , 711; compare Theognis, 1197 sqq. But the Greeks also ploughed in spring (Hesiod, op. cit. 462; Xenophon, Oeconom. 16); indeed they ploughed thrice in the year (Theophrastus, Historia Plantarum , vii. 13. 6). At the approach of autumn the cranes of northern Europe collect about rivers and lakes, and after much trumpeting set out in enormous bands on their southward journey to the tropical regions of Africa and India. In early spring they return northward, and their flocks may be descried passing at a marvellous height overhead or halting to rest in the meadows beside some broad river. The bird emits its trumpet-like note both on the ground and on the wing. See Alfred Newton, Dictionary of Birds (London, 1893-1896), pp. 110 sq. But while the ordinary Greek farmer took the signal for ploughing from the clangour of the cranes, Hesiod and other writers who aimed at greater exactness laid it down as a rule that the ploughing should begin with the autumnal setting of the Pleiades in the morning, which in Hesiod's time fell on the twenty-sixth of October. 162 162 Hesiod, Works and Days , 383 sq. , 615-617; Aratus, Phaenomena , 254-267; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 241 sq. According to Pliny ( Nat. Hist. xviii. 49) wheat, barley, and all other cereals were sown in Greece and Asia from the time of the autumn setting of the Pleiades. This date for ploughing and sowing is confirmed by Hippocrates and other medical writers. See W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities , 3 i. 234. Latin writers prescribe the same date for the sowing of wheat. See Virgil, Georg. i. 219-226; Columella, De re rustica , ii. 8; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 223-226. In Columella's time the Pleiades, he tells us ( l. c. ), set in the morning of October 24th of the Julian calendar, which would correspond to the October 16th of our reckoning. The month in which the Pleiades set in the morning was generally recognised by the Greeks as the month of sowing; it corresponded apparently in part to our October, in part to our November. The Athenians called it Pyanepsion; the Boeotians named it significantly Damatrius, that is, Demeter's month, and they celebrated a feast of mourning because, says Plutarch, who as a Boeotian speaks with authority on such a matter, Demeter was then in mourning for the descent of Persephone. 163 163 Plutarch, Isis et Osiris , 69. Is it possible to express more clearly the true original nature of Persephone as the corn-seed which has just been buried in the earth? The obvious, the almost inevitable conclusion did not escape Plutarch. He tells us that the mournful rites which were held at the time of the autumn sowing nominally commemorated the actions of deities, but that the real sadness was for the fruits of the earth, some of which at that season dropped of themselves and vanished from the trees, while others in the shape of seed were committed with anxious thoughts to the ground by men, who scraped the earth and then huddled it up over the seed, just as if they were burying and mourning for the dead. 164 164 Plutarch, Isis et Osiris , 70. Similarly Cornutus says that “Hades is fabled to have carried off Demeter's daughter because the seed vanishes for a time under the earth,” and he mentions that a festival of Demeter was celebrated at the time of sowing ( Theologiae Graecae Compendium , 28, pp. 54, 55 ed. C. Lang). In a fragment of a Greek calendar which is preserved in the Louvre “the ascent (ἀναβάσις) of the goddess” is dated the seventh day of the month Dius, and “the descent or setting (δύσις) of the goddess” is dated the fourth day of the month Hephaestius, a month which seems to be otherwise unknown. See W. Froehner, Musée Nationale du Louvre, Les Inscriptions Grecques (Paris, 1880), pp. 50 sq. Greek inscriptions found at Mantinea refer to a worship of Demeter and Persephone, who are known to have had a sanctuary there (Pausanias, viii. 9. 2). The people of Mantinea celebrated “mysteries of the goddess” and a festival called the koragia , which seems to have represented the return of Persephone from the lower world. See W. Immerwahr, Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens (Leipsic, 1891), pp. 100 sq. ; S. Reinach, Traité d'Epigraphie Grecque (Paris, 1885), pp. 141 sqq. ; Hesychius, s. v. κοράγειν. Surely this interpretation of the custom and of the myth of Persephone is not only beautiful but true.

Thank-offerings of ripe grain presented by Greek farmers to Demeter after the harvest. Theocritus's description of a harvest-home in Cos.

And just as the Greek husbandman prayed to the Corn Goddess when he committed the seed, with anxious forebodings, to the furrows, so after he had reaped the harvest and brought back the yellow sheaves with rejoicing to the threshing-floor, he paid the bountiful goddess her dues in the form of a thank-offering of golden grain. Theocritus has painted for us in glowing colours a picture of a rustic harvest-home, as it fell on a bright autumn day some two thousand years ago in the little Greek island of Cos. 165 165 Theocritus, Idyl. vii. The poet tells us how he went with two friends from the city to attend a festival given by farmers, who were offering first-fruits to Demeter from the store of barley with which she had filled their barns. The day was warm, indeed so hot that the very lizards, which love to bask and run about in the sun, were slumbering in the crevices of the stone-walls, and not a lark soared carolling into the blue vault of heaven. Yet despite the great heat there were everywhere signs of autumn. “All things,” says the poet, “smelt of summer, but smelt of autumn too.” Indeed the day was really autumnal; for a goat-herd who met the friends on their way to the rural merry-making, asked them whether they were bound for the treading of the grapes in the wine-presses. And when they had reached their destination and reclined at ease in the dappled shade of over-arching poplars and elms, with the babble of a neighbouring fountain, the buzz of the cicadas, the hum of bees, and the cooing of doves in their ears, the ripe apples and pears rolled in the grass at their feet and the branches of the wild-plum trees were bowed down to the earth with the weight of their purple fruit. So couched on soft beds of fragrant lentisk they passed the sultry hours singing ditties alternately, while a rustic image of Demeter, to whom the honours of the day were paid, stood smiling beside a heap of yellow grain on the threshing-floor, with corn-stalks and poppies in her hands.