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

Athenian decree concerning the offerings of first-fruits at Eleusis.

This testimony of Isocrates to the antiquity both of the legend and of the custom might perhaps have been set aside, or at least disparaged, as the empty bombast of a wordy rhetorician, if it had not happened by good chance to be amply confirmed by an official decree of the Athenian people passed in the century before Isocrates wrote. The decree was found inscribed on a stone at Eleusis and is dated by scholars in the latter half of the fifth century before our era, sometime between 446 and 420 b. c. 190 190 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 No. 20 (vol. i. pp. 33 sqq. ); E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy , Part ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, pp. 22 sqq. It deals with the first-fruits of barley and wheat which were offered to the Two Goddesses, that is, to Demeter and Persephone, not only by the Athenians and their allies but by the Greeks in general. It prescribes the exact amount of barley and wheat which was to be offered by the Athenians and their allies, and it directs the highest officials at Eleusis, namely the Hierophant and the Torchbearer, to exhort the other Greeks at the mysteries to offer likewise of the first-fruits of the corn. The authority alleged in the decree for requiring or inviting offerings of first-fruits alike from Athenians and from foreigners is ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle. The Senate is further enjoined to send commissioners, so far as it could be done, to all Greek cities whatsoever, exhorting, though not commanding, them to send the first-fruits in compliance with ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle, and the state officials are directed to receive the offerings from such states in the same manner as the offerings of the Athenians and their allies. Instructions are also given for the building of three subterranean granaries at Eleusis, where the contributions of grain from Attica were to be stored. The best of the corn was to be offered in sacrifice as the Eumolpids might direct: oxen were to be bought and sacrificed, with gilt horns, not only to the two Goddesses but also to the God (Pluto), Triptolemus, Eubulus, and Athena; and the remainder of the grain was to be sold and with the produce votive offerings were to be dedicated with inscriptions setting forth that they had been dedicated from the offerings of first-fruits, and recording the names of all the Greeks who sent the offerings to Eleusis. The decree ends with a prayer that all who comply with these injunctions or exhortations and render their dues to the city of Athens and to the Two Goddesses, may enjoy prosperity together with good and abundant crops. Writing in the second century of our era, under the Roman empire, the rhetorician Aristides records the custom which the Greeks observed of sending year by year the first-fruits of the harvest to Athens in gratitude for the corn, but he speaks of the practice as a thing of the past. 191 191 Aristides, Panathen. and Eleusin. , vol. i. pp. 167 sq. , 417 ed. G. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1829).

Even after foreign states ceased to send first-fruits of the corn to Eleusis, they continued to acknowledge the benefit which the Athenians had conferred on mankind by diffusing among them Demeter's gift of the corn. Testimony of the Sicilian historian Diodorus. Testimony of Cicero and Himerius.

We may suspect that the tribute of corn ceased to flow from far countries to Athens, when, with her falling fortunes and decaying empire, her proud galleys had ceased to carry the terror of the Athenian arms into distant seas. But if the homage was no longer paid in the substantial shape of cargoes of grain, it continued down to the latest days of paganism to be paid in the cheaper form of gratitude for that inestimable benefit, which the Athenians claimed to have received from the Corn Goddess and to have liberally communicated to the rest of mankind. Even the Sicilians, who, inhabiting a fertile corn-growing island, worshipped Demeter and Persephone above all the gods and claimed to have been the first to receive the gift of the corn from the Corn Goddess, 192 192 Diodorus Siculus, v. 2 and 4; Cicero, In C. Verrem , act. ii. bk. iv. chapters 48 sq. Both writers mention that the whole of Sicily was deemed sacred to Demeter and Persephone, and that corn was said to have grown in the island before it appeared anywhere else. In support of the latter claim Diodorus Siculus (v. 2. 4) asserts that wheat grew wild in many parts of Sicily. nevertheless freely acknowledged that the Athenians had spread, though they had not originated, the useful discovery among the nations. Thus the patriotic Sicilian historian Diodorus, while giving the precedence to his fellow-countrymen, strives to be just to the Athenian pretensions in the following passage. 193 193 Diodorus Siculus, v. 4. “Mythologists,” says he, “relate that Demeter, unable to find her daughter, lit torches at the craters of Etna 194 194 This legend, which is mentioned also by Cicero ( In C. Verrem , act. ii. bk. iv. ch. 48), was no doubt told to explain the use of torches in the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. The author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells us (verses 47 sq. ) that Demeter searched for her lost daughter for nine days with burning torches in her hands, but he does not say that the torches were kindled at the flames of Etna. In art Demeter and Persephone and their attendants were often represented with torches in their hands. See L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , iii. (Oxford, 1907) plates xiii., xv. a , xvi., xvii., xviii., xix., xx., xxi. a , xxv., xxvii. b . Perhaps the legend of the torchlight search for Persephone and the use of the torches in the mysteries may have originated in a custom of carrying fire about the fields as a charm to secure sunshine for the corn. See The Golden Bough , 2 iii. 313. and roamed over many parts of the world. Those people who received her best she rewarded by giving them in return the fruit of the wheat; and because the Athenians welcomed her most kindly of all, she bestowed the fruit of the wheat on them next after the Sicilians. Wherefore that people honoured the goddess more than any other folk by magnificent sacrifices and the mysteries at Eleusis, which for their extreme antiquity and sanctity have become famous among all men. From the Athenians many others received the boon of the corn and shared the seed with their neighbours, till they filled the whole inhabited earth with it. But as the people of Sicily, on account of the intimate relation in which they stood to Demeter and the Maiden, were the first to participate in the newly discovered corn, they appointed sacrifices and popular festivities in honour of each of the two goddesses, naming the celebrations after them and signifying the nature of the boons they had received by the dates of the festivals. For they celebrated the bringing home of the Maiden at the time when the corn was ripe, performing the sacrifice and holding the festivity with all the solemnity and zeal that might be reasonably expected of men who desired to testify their gratitude for so signal a gift bestowed on them before all the rest of mankind. But the sacrifice to Demeter they assigned to the time when the sowing of the corn begins; and for ten days they hold a popular festivity which bears the name of the goddess, and is remarkable as well for the magnificence of its pomp as for the costumes then worn in imitation of the olden time. During these days it is customary for people to rail at each other in foul language, because when Demeter was mourning for the rape of the Maiden she laughed at a ribald jest.” 195 195 The words which I have translated “the bringing home of the Maiden” (τῆς Κόρης τὴν καταγωγήν) are explained with great probability by Professor M. P. Nilsson as referring to the bringing of the ripe corn to the barn or the threshing-floor ( Griechische Feste , Leipsic, 1906, pp. 356 sq. ). This interpretation accords perfectly with a well-attested sense of καταγωγή and its cognate verb κατάγειν, and is preferable to the other possible interpretation “the bringing down,” which would refer to the descent of Persephone into the nether world; for such a descent is hardly appropriate to a harvest festival. Thus despite his natural prepossession in favour of his native land, Diodorus bears testimony both to the special blessing bestowed on the Athenians by the Corn Goddess, and to the generosity with which they had imparted the blessing to others, until it gradually spread to the ends of the earth. Again, Cicero, addressing a Roman audience, enumerates among the benefits which Athens was believed to have conferred on the world, the gift of the corn and its origin in Attic soil; and the cursory manner in which he alludes to it seems to prove that the tradition was familiar to his hearers. 196 196 Cicero, Pro L. Flacco , 26. Four centuries later the rhetorician Himerius speaks of Demeter's gift of the corn and the mysteries to the Athenians as the source of the first and greatest service rendered by their city to mankind; 197 197 Himerius, Orat. ii. 5. so ancient, widespread, and persistent was the legend which ascribed the origin of the corn to the goddess Demeter and associated it with the institution of the Eleusinian mysteries. No wonder that the Delphic oracle called Athens “the Metropolis of the Corn.” 198 198 Μητρόπολις τῶν καρπῶν, Aristides, Panathen. vol. i. p. 168 ed. G. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1829).