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

The Sicilians seem to have associated Demeter with the seed-corn and Persephone with the ripe ears. Difficulty of distinguishing between Demeter and Persephone as personifications of different aspects of the corn.

From the passage of Diodorus which I have quoted we learn that the Sicilians celebrated the festival of Demeter at the beginning of sowing, and the festival of Persephone at harvest. This proves that they associated, if they did not identify, the Mother Goddess with the seed-corn and the Daughter Goddess with the ripe ears. Could any association or identification be more easy and obvious to people who personified the processes of nature under the form of anthropomorphic deities? As the seed brings forth the ripe ear, so the Corn Mother Demeter gave birth to the Corn Daughter Persephone. It is true that difficulties arise when we attempt to analyse this seemingly simple conception. How, for example, are we to divide exactly the two persons of the divinity? At what precise moment does the seed cease to be the Corn Mother and begins to burgeon out into the Corn Daughter? And how far can we identify the material substance of the barley and wheat with the divine bodies of the Two Goddesses? Questions of this sort probably gave little concern to the sturdy swains who ploughed, sowed, and reaped the fat fields of Sicily. We cannot imagine that their night's rest was disturbed by uneasy meditations on these knotty problems. It would hardly be strange if the muzzy mind of the Sicilian bumpkin, who looked with blind devotion to the Two Goddesses for his daily bread, totally failed to distinguish Demeter from the seed and Persephone from the ripe sheaves, and if he accepted implicitly the doctrine of the real presence of the divinities in the corn without discriminating too curiously between the material and the spiritual properties of the barley or the wheat. And if he had been closely questioned by a rigid logician as to the exact distinction to be drawn between the two persons of the godhead who together represented for him the annual vicissitudes of the cereals, Hodge might have scratched his head and confessed that it puzzled him to say where precisely the one goddess ended and the other began, or why the seed buried in the ground should figure at one time as the dead daughter Persephone descending into the nether world, and at another as the living Mother Demeter about to give birth to next year's crop. Theological subtleties like these have posed longer heads than are commonly to be found on bucolic shoulders.

The time of the year when the first-fruits of the corn were offered to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis is not known.

The time of year at which the first-fruits were offered to Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis is not explicitly mentioned by ancient authorities, and accordingly no inference can be drawn from the date of the offering as to its religious significance. It is true that at the Eleusinian mysteries the Hierophant and Torchbearer publicly exhorted the Greeks in general, as distinguished from the Athenians and their allies, to offer the first-fruits in accordance with ancestral custom and the bidding of the Delphic oracle. 199 199 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 No. 20, lines 25 sqq. ; E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy , ii. (Cambridge, 1905) No. 9, lines 25 sqq. , κελευέτω δὲ καί ὁ ἱεροφάντης καὶ ὁ δᾳδοῦχος μυστηρίοις ἀπάρχεσθαι τοὺς Ἔλληνας τοῦ καρποῦ κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν τὴν ἐγ Δελφῶν. By coupling μυστηρίοις with ἀπάρχεσθαι instead of with κελεύετω, Miss J. E. Harrison understands the offering instead of the exhortation to have been made at the mysteries ( Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , Second Edition, p. 155, “Let the Hierophant and the Torchbearer command that at the mysteries the Hellenes should offer first-fruits of their crops,” etc.). This interpretation is no doubt grammatically permissible, but the context seems to plead strongly, if not to be absolutely decisive, in favour of the other. It is to be observed that the exhortation was addressed not to the Athenians and their allies (who were compelled to make the offering) but only to the other Greeks, who might make it or not as they pleased; and the amount of such voluntary contributions was probably small compared to that of the compulsory contributions, as to the date of which nothing is said. That the proclamation to the Greeks in general was an exhortation (κελευέτω), not a command, is clearly shewn by the words of the decree a few lines lower down, where commissioners are directed to go to all Greek states exhorting but not commanding them to offer the first-fruits (ἐκείνοις δὲ μὴ ἐπιτάττοντας, κελεύοντας δὲ ἀπάρχεσθαι ἐὰν βούλωνται κατὰ τὰ πάτρια καὶ τὴν μαντείαν ἐγ Δελφῶν). The Athenians could not command free and independent states to make such offerings, still less could they prescribe the exact date when the offerings were to be made. All that they could and did do was, taking advantage of the great assembly of Greeks from all quarters at the mysteries, to invite or exhort, by the mouth of the great priestly functionaries, the foreigners to contribute. But there is nothing to shew that the offerings were made immediately after the exhortation. Nor does any ancient authority support the view of a modern scholar that the offering of the first-fruits, or a portion of them, took place at the Festival before Ploughing ( Proerosia ), 200 200 August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 192 sqq. though that festival would no doubt be an eminently appropriate occasion for propitiating with such offerings the goddess on whose bounty the next year's crop was believed to depend.

The Festival of the Threshing-floor ( Haloa ) at Eleusis.

On the other hand, we are positively told that the first-fruits were carried to Eleusis to be used at the Festival of the Threshing-floor ( Haloa ). 201 201 Eustathius on Homer, Iliad , ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca , i. 384 sq. , s. v. Ἁλῶα. Compare O. Rubensohn, Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und Samothrake (Berlin, 1892), p. 116. But the statement, cursorily reported by writers of no very high authority, cannot be implicitly relied upon; and even if it could, we should hardly be justified in inferring from it that all the first-fruits of the corn were offered to Demeter and Persephone at this festival. Be that as it may, the Festival of the Threshing-floor was intimately connected with the worship both of Demeter and of Dionysus, and accordingly it deserves our attention. It is said to have been sacred to both these deities; 202 202 Eustathius on Homer, Iliad , ix. 534, p. 772; Im. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca , i. 384 sq. , s. v. Ἁλῶα. and while the name seems to connect it rather with the Corn Goddess than with the Wine God, we are yet informed that it was held by the Athenians on the occasion of the pruning of the vines and the tasting of the stored-up wine. 203 203 Scholia in Lucianum , ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 279 sq. (scholium on Dialog. Meretr. vii. 4). The festival is frequently mentioned in Eleusinian inscriptions, from some of which we gather that it included sacrifices to the two goddesses and a so-called Ancestral Contest, as to the nature of which we have no information. 204 204 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 Nos. 192, 246, 587, 640; Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135 sq. The passages of inscriptions and of ancient authors which refer to the festival are collected by Dr. L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States , iii. (Oxford, 1907) pp. 315 sq. For a discussion of the evidence see August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 359 sqq. ; Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , Second Edition (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 145 sqq. We may suppose that the festival or some part of it was celebrated on the Sacred Threshing-floor of Triptolemus at Eleusis; 205 205 The threshing-floor of Triptolemus at Eleusis (Pausanias, i. 38. 6) is no doubt identical with the Sacred Threshing-floor mentioned in the great Eleusinian inscription of 329 b. c. (Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 No. 587, line 234). We read of a hierophant who, contrary to ancestral custom, sacrificed a victim on the hearth in the Hall at Eleusis during the Festival of the Threshing-floor, “it being unlawful to sacrifice victims on that day” (Demosthenes, Contra Neaeram , 116, pp. 1384 sq. ), but from such an unlawful act no inference can be drawn as to the place where the festival was held. That the festival probably had special reference to the threshing-floor of Triptolemus has already been pointed out by O. Rubensohn ( Die Mysterienheiligtümer in Eleusis und Samothrake , Berlin, 1892, p. 118). for as Triptolemus was the hero who is said to have diffused the knowledge of the corn all over the world, nothing could be more natural than that the Festival of the Threshing-floor should be held on the sacred threshing-floor which bore his name. As for Demeter, we have already seen how intimate was her association with the threshing-floor and the operation of threshing; according to Homer, she is the yellow goddess who parts the yellow grain from the white chaff at the threshing, and in Cos her image with the corn-stalks and the poppies in her hands stood on the threshing-floor. 206 206 See above, pp. 41 sq. , 43 . Maximus Tyrius observes ( Dissertat. xxx. 5) that husbandmen were the first to celebrate sacred rites in honour of Demeter at the threshing-floor. The festival lasted one day, and no victims might be sacrificed at it; 207 207 See above, p. , note 4. but special use was made, as we have seen, of the first-fruits of the corn. With regard to the dating of the festival we are informed that it fell in the month Poseideon, which corresponds roughly to our December, and as the date rests on the high authority of the ancient Athenian antiquary Philochorus, 208 208 Harpocration, s. v. Ἁλῶα (vol. i. p. 24, ed. G. Dindorf). and is, moreover, indirectly confirmed by inscriptional evidence, 209 209 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum , 2 No. 587, lines 124, 144, with the editor's notes; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum , p. 360. we are bound to accept it. But it is certainly surprising to find a Festival of the Threshing-floor held so late in the year, long after the threshing, which in Greece usually takes place not later than midsummer, though on high ground in Crete it is sometimes prolonged till near the end of August. 210 210 So I am informed by my friend Professor J. L. Myres, who speaks from personal observation. We seem bound to conclude that the Festival of the Threshing-floor was quite distinct from the actual threshing of the corn. 211 211 This is recognised by Professor M. P. Nilsson. See his Studia de Dionysiis Atticis (Lund, 1900), pp. 95 sqq. , and his Griechische Feste , p. 329. To explain the lateness of the festival, Miss J. E. Harrison suggests that “the shift of date is due to Dionysos. The rival festivals of Dionysos were in mid-winter. He possessed himself of the festivals of Demeter, took over her threshing-floor and compelled the anomaly of a winter threshing festival” ( Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion , Second Edition, p. 147). It is said to have included certain mystic rites performed by women alone, who feasted and quaffed wine, while they broke filthy jests on each other and exhibited cakes baked in the form of the male and female organs of generation. 212 212 Scholiast on Lucian, Dial. Meretr. vii. 4 ( Scholia in Lucianum , ed. H. Rabe, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 279-281). If the latter particulars are correctly reported we may suppose that these indecencies, like certain obscenities which seem to have formed part of the Great Mysteries at Eleusis, 213 213 Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 15 and 20, pp. 13 and 17 ed. Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes , v. 25-27, 35, 39. were no mere wanton outbursts of licentious passion, but were deliberately practised as rites calculated to promote the fertility of the ground by means of homoeopathic or imitative magic. A like association of what we might call indecency with rites intended to promote the growth of the crops meets us in the Thesmophoria, a festival of Demeter celebrated by women alone, at which the character of the goddess as a source of fertility comes out clearly in the custom of mixing the remains of the sacrificial pigs with the seed-corn in order to obtain a plentiful crop. We shall return to this festival later on. 214 214 See below, p. 116 ; vol. ii. pp. 17 sqq.