the goddess.
Demeter is usually represented as a woman of noble {52}
bearing and
majestic appearance, tall, matronly, and dignified, with beautiful golden
hair, which falls in rippling curls over her stately shoulders, the yellow
locks being emblematical of the ripened ears of corn.
Sometimes she appears
seated in a chariot drawn by winged dragons, at others she stands erect,
her figure drawn up to its full height, and always fully draped; she bears
a sheaf of wheat-ears in one hand and a lighted torch in the other. The
wheat-ears are not unfrequently replaced by a bunch of poppies, with which
her brows are also garlanded, though sometimes she merely wears a simple
riband in her hair.
Demeter, as the wife of Zeus, became the mother of Persephone (Proserpine),
to whom she was so tenderly attached that her whole life was bound up in
her, and she knew no happiness except in her society.
One day, however,
whilst Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow, attended by the
ocean-nymphs, she saw to her surprise a beautiful narcissus, from the stem
of which sprang forth a hundred blossoms. Drawing near to examine this
lovely flower, whose exquisite scent perfumed the air, she stooped down to
gather it, suspecting no evil, when a yawning abyss opened at her feet, and
Aïdes, the grim ruler of the lower world, appeared from its depths, seated
in his dazzling chariot drawn by four black horses.
Regardless of her tears
and the shrieks of her female attendants, Aïdes seized the terrified
maiden, and bore her away to the gloomy realms over which he reigned in
melancholy grandeur. Helios, the all-seeing sun-god, and Hecate, a
mysterious and very ancient divinity, alone heard her cries for aid, but
were powerless to help her. When Demeter became conscious of her loss her
grief was intense, and she refused to be comforted. She knew not where to
seek for her child, but feeling that repose and inaction were impossible,
she set out on her weary search, taking with her two torches which she
lighted in the flames of Mount Etna to guide her on her way. For nine long
days and nights she wandered on, inquiring of every one she met for tidings
of her child. {53} But all was in vain! Neither gods nor men could give her
the comfort which her soul so hungered for. At last, on the tenth day, the
disconsolate mother met Hecate, who informed her that she had heard her
daughter's cries, but knew not who it was that had borne her away. By
Hecate's advice Demeter consulted Helios, whose all-seeing eye nothing
escapes, and from him she learnt that it was Zeus himself who had permitted
Aïdes to seize Persephone, and transport her to the lower world in order
that she might become his wife. Indignant with Zeus for having given his
sanction to the abduction of his daughter, and filled with the bitterest
sorrow, she abandoned her home in Olympus, and refused all heavenly food.
Disguising herself as an old woman, she descended upon earth, and commenced
a weary pilgrimage among mankind. One evening she arrived at a place called
Eleusis, in Attica, and sat down to rest herself near a well beneath the
shade of an olive-tree. The youthful daughters of Celeus, the king of the
country, came with their pails of brass to draw water from this well, and
seeing that the tired wayfarer appeared faint and dispirited, they spoke
kindly to her, asking who she was, and whence she came.
Demeter replied
that she had made her escape from pirates, who had captured her, and added
that she would feel grateful for a home with any worthy family, whom she
would be willing to serve in a menial capacity. The princesses, on hearing
this, begged Demeter to have a moment's patience while they returned home
and consulted their mother, Metaneira. They soon brought the joyful
intelligence that she was desirous of securing her services as nurse to her
infant son Demophoon, or Triptolemus. When Demeter arrived at the house a
radiant light suddenly illumined her, which circumstance so overawed
Metaneira that she treated the unknown stranger with the greatest respect,
and hospitably offered her food and drink. But Demeter, still grief-worn
and dejected, refused her friendly offers, and held herself apart from the
social board. At length, however, the maid-servant Iambe succeeded, by
means {54} of playful jests and merriment, in somewhat dispelling the grief
of the sorrowing mother, causing her at times to smile in spite of herself,
and even inducing her to partake of a mixture of barley-meal, mint, and
water, which was prepared according to the directions of the goddess
herself. Time passed on, and the young child throve amazingly under the
care of his kind and judicious nurse, who, however, gave him no food, but
anointed him daily with ambrosia, and every night laid him secretly in the
fire in order to render him immortal and exempt from old age. But,
unfortunately, this benevolent design on the part of Demeter was frustrated
by Metaneira herself, whose curiosity, one night, impelled her to watch the
proceedings of the mysterious being who nursed her child. When to her
horror she beheld her son placed in the flames, she shrieked aloud.
Demeter, incensed at this untimely interruption, instantly withdrew the
child, and throwing him on the ground, revealed herself in her true
character. The bent and aged form had vanished, and in its place there
stood a bright and beauteous being, whose golden locks streamed over her
shoulders in richest luxuriance, her whole aspect bespeaking dignity and
majesty. She told the awe-struck Metaneira that she was the goddess
Demeter, and had intended to make her son immortal, but that her fatal
curiosity had rendered this impossible, adding, however, that the child,
having slept in her arms, and been nursed on her lap, should ever command
the respect and esteem of mankind. She then desired that a temple and altar
should be erected to her on a neighbouring hill by the people of Eleusis,
promising that she herself would direct them how to perform the sacred
rites and ceremonies, which should be observed in her honour. With these
words she took her departure never to return.
Obedient to her commands, Celeus called together a meeting of his people,
and built the temple on the spot which the goddess had indicated. It was
soon completed, and Demeter took up her abode in it, but her heart was
still sad for the loss of her daughter, and the whole world felt the
influence of her grief and dejection. This was {55}
indeed a terrible year
for mankind. Demeter no longer smiled on the earth she was wont to bless,
and though the husbandman sowed the grain, and the groaning oxen ploughed
the fields, no harvest rewarded their labour. All was barren, dreary
desolation. The world was threatened with famine, and the gods with the
loss of their accustomed honours and sacrifices; it became evident,
therefore, to Zeus himself that some measures must be adopted to appease
the anger of the goddess. He accordingly despatched Iris and many of the
other gods and goddesses to implore Demeter to return to Olympus; but all
their prayers were fruitless. The incensed goddess swore that until her
daughter was restored to her she would not allow the grain to spring forth
from the earth. At length Zeus sent Hermes, his faithful messenger, to the
lower world with a petition to Aïdes, urgently entreating him to restore
Persephone to the arms of her disconsolate mother. When he arrived in the
gloomy realms of Aïdes, Hermes found him seated on a throne with the
beautiful Persephone beside him, sorrowfully bewailing her unhappy fate. On
learning his errand, Aïdes consented to resign Persephone, who joyfully
prepared to follow the messenger of the gods to the abode of life and
light. Before taking leave of her husband, he presented to her a few seeds
of pomegranate, which in her excitement she thoughtlessly swallowed, and
this simple act, as the sequel will show, materially affected her whole
future life. The meeting between mother and child was one of unmixed
rapture, and for the moment all the past was forgotten.
The loving mother's
happiness would now have been complete had not Aïdes asserted his rights.
These were, that if any immortal had tasted food in his realms they were
bound to remain there for ever. Of course the ruler of the lower world had
to prove this assertion. This, however, he found no difficulty in doing, as
Ascalaphus, the son of Acheron and Orphne, was his witness to the fact.[25]
Zeus, pitying the disappointment of Demeter at finding
{56} her hopes thus
blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother Aïdes
to allow Persephone to spend six months of the year with the gods above,
whilst during the other six she was to be the joyless companion of her grim
lord below. Accompanied by her daughter, the beautiful Persephone, Demeter
now resumed her long-abandoned dwelling in Olympus; the sympathetic earth
responded gaily to her bright smiles, the corn at once sprang forth from
the ground in fullest plenty, the trees, which late were sered and bare,
now donned their brightest emerald robes, and the flowers, so long
imprisoned in the hard, dry soil, filled the whole air with their fragrant
perfume. Thus ends this charming story, which was a favourite theme with
all the classic authors.
It is very possible that the poets who first created this graceful myth
merely intended it as an allegory to illustrate the change of seasons; in
the course of time, however, a literal meaning became attached to this and
similar poetical fancies, and thus the people of Greece came to regard as
an article of religious belief what, in the first instance, was nothing
more than a poetic simile.
In the temple erected to Demeter at Eleusis, the famous Eleusinian
Mysteries were instituted by the goddess herself. It is exceedingly
difficult, as in the case of all secret societies, to discover anything
with certainty concerning these sacred rites. The most plausible
supposition is that the doctrines taught by the priests to the favoured few
whom they initiated, were religious truths which were deemed unfit for the
uninstructed mind of the multitude. For instance, it is supposed that the
myth of Demeter and Persephone was explained by the teachers of the
Mysteries to signify the temporary loss which mother earth sustains every
year when the icy breath of winter robs her of her flowers and fruits and
grain.
It is believed that in later times a still deeper meaning was conveyed by
this beautiful myth, viz., the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The
grain, which, as it were, remains dead for a time in the dark earth, only
{57} to rise one day dressed in a newer and lovelier garb, was supposed to
symbolize the soul, which, after death, frees itself from corruption, to
live again under a better and purer form.
When Demeter instituted the Eleusinian Mysteries, Celeus and his family
were the first to be initiated, Celeus himself being appointed high-priest.
His son Triptolemus and his daughters, who acted as priestesses, assisted
him in the duties of his sacred office. The Mysteries were celebrated by
the Athenians every five years, and were, for a long time, their exclusive
privilege. They took place by torchlight, and were conducted with the
greatest solemnity.
In order to spread abroad the blessings which agriculture confers, Demeter
presented Triptolemus with her chariot drawn by winged dragons, and, giving
him some grains of corn, desired him to journey through the world, teaching
mankind the arts of agriculture and husbandry.
[Illustration]
Demeter exercised great severity towards those who incurred her
displeasure. We find examples of this in the stories of Stellio and
Eresicthon. Stellio was a youth who ridiculed the goddess for the eagerness
with which she was eating a bowl of porridge, when weary and faint in the
vain search for her daughter. Resolved that he should never again have an
opportunity of thus offending, she angrily threw into his face the
remainder of the food, and changed him into a spotted lizard.
Eresicthon, son of Triopas, had drawn upon himself the anger of Demeter by
cutting down her sacred groves, for which she punished him with a constant
and insatiable hunger. He sold all his possessions in order to satisfy his
cravings, and was forced at last to devour his own limbs. His daughter
Metra, who was devotedly attached to him, possessed the power of
transforming herself into a variety of different animals. By this means she
contrived to support her father, who sold her again and again each time she
assumed a different form, and thus he dragged on a pitiful existence. {58}
CERES.
The Roman Ceres is actually the Greek Demeter under another name, her
attributes, worship, festivals, &c., being precisely identical.
The Romans were indebted to Sicily for this divinity, her worship having
been introduced by the Greek colonists who settled there.
The Cerealia, or festivals in honour of Ceres, commenced on the 12th of
April, and lasted several days.
APHRODITE (VENUS).
Aphrodite (from _aphros_, sea-foam, and _dite_, issued), the daughter of
Zeus and a sea-nymph called Dione, was the goddess of Love and Beauty.
Dione, being a sea-nymph, gave birth to her daughter beneath the waves; but
the child of the heaven-inhabiting Zeus was forced to ascend from the
ocean-depths and mount to the snow-capped summits of Olympus, in order to
breathe that ethereal and most refined atmosphere which pertains to the
celestial gods.
Aphrodite was the mother of Eros (Cupid), the god of Love, also of Æneas,
the great Trojan hero and the head of that Greek colony which settled in
Italy, and from which arose the city of Rome. As a mother Aphrodite claims
our sympathy for the tenderness she exhibits towards her children. Homer
tells us in his Iliad, how, when Æneas was wounded in battle, she came to
his assistance, regardless of personal danger, and was herself severely
wounded in attempting to save his life. {59}
Aphrodite was tenderly attached to a lovely youth, called Adonis, whose
exquisite beauty has become proverbial. He was a motherless babe, and
Aphrodite, taking pity on him, placed him in a chest and intrusted him to
the care of Persephone, who became so fond of the beautiful youth that she
refused to part with him. Zeus, being appealed to by the rival
foster-mothers, decided that Adonis should spend four months of every year
with Persephone, four with Aphrodite, whilst during the remaining four
months he should be left to his own devices. He became, however, so
attached to Aphrodite that he voluntarily devoted to her the time at his
own disposal. Adonis was killed, during the chase, by a wild boar, to the
great grief of Aphrodite, who bemoaned his loss so persistently that Aïdes,
moved with pity, permitted him to pass six months of every year with her,
whilst the remaining half of the year was spent by him in the lower world.
Aphrodite possessed a magic girdle (the famous _cestus_) which she
frequently lent to unhappy maidens suffering from the pangs of unrequited
love, as it was endowed with the power of inspiring affection for the
wearer, whom it invested with every attribute of grace, beauty, and
fascination.
Her usual attendants are the Charites or Graces (Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and
Thalia), who are represented undraped and intertwined in a loving embrace.
In Hesiod's _Theogony_ she is supposed to belong to the more ancient
divinities, and, whilst those of later date are represented as having
descended one from another, and all more or less from Zeus, Aphrodite has a
variously-accounted-for, yet independent origin.
The most poetical version of her birth is that when Uranus was wounded by
his son Cronus, his blood mingled with the foam of the sea, whereupon the
bubbling waters at once assumed a rosy tint, and from their depths arose,
in all the surpassing glory of her loveliness, Aphrodite, goddess of love
and beauty! Shaking her long, fair tresses, the water-drops rolled down
into the beautiful {60} sea-shell in which she stood, and became
transformed into pure glistening pearls. Wafted by the soft and balmy
breezes, she floated on to Cythera, and was thence transported to the
island of Cyprus. Lightly she stepped on shore, and under the gentle
pressure of her delicate foot the dry and rigid sand became transformed
into a verdant meadow, where every varied shade of colour and every sweet
odour charmed the senses. The whole island of Cyprus became clothed with
verdure, and greeted this fairest of all created beings with a glad smile
of friendly welcome. Here she was received by the Seasons, who decked her
with garments of immortal fabric, encircling her fair brow with a wreath of
purest gold, whilst from her ears depended costly rings, and a glittering
chain embraced her swan-like throat. And now, arrayed in all the panoply of
her irresistible charms, the nymphs escort her to the dazzling halls of
Olympus, where she is received with ecstatic enthusiasm by the admiring
gods and goddesses. The gods all vied with each other in aspiring to the
honour of her hand, but Hephæstus became the envied possessor of this
lovely being, who, however, proved as faithless as she was beautiful, and
caused her husband much unhappiness, owing to the preference she showed at
various times for some of the other gods and also for mortal men.
[Illustration]
The celebrated Venus of Milo, now in the Louvre, is an exquisite statue of
this divinity. The head is beautifully formed; the rich waves of hair
descend on her rather low but broad forehead and are caught up gracefully
in a small knot at the back of the head; the expression of the face is most
bewitching, and bespeaks the perfect {61} joyousness of a happy nature
combined with the dignity of a goddess; the drapery falls in careless folds
from the waist downwards, and her whole attitude is the embodiment of all
that is graceful and lovely in womanhood. She is of medium height, and the
form is perfect in its symmetry and faultless proportions.
Aphrodite is also frequently represented in the act of confining her
dripping locks in a knot, whilst her attendant nymphs envelop her in a
gauzy veil.
The animals sacred to her were the dove, swan, swallow, and sparrow. Her
favourite plants were the myrtle, apple-tree, rose, and poppy.
The worship of Aphrodite is supposed to have been introduced into Greece
from Central Asia. There is no doubt that she was originally identical with
the famous Astarté, the Ashtoreth of the Bible, against whose idolatrous
worship and infamous rites the prophets of old hurled forth their sublime
and powerful anathemas.
VENUS.
The Venus of the Romans was identified with the Aphrodite of the Greeks.
The worship of this divinity was only established in Rome in comparatively
later times. Annual festivals, called Veneralia, were held in her honour,
and the month of April, when flowers and plants spring forth afresh, was
sacred to her. She was worshipped as Venus Cloacina (or the Purifier), and
as Venus Myrtea (or the myrtle goddess), an epithet derived from the
myrtle, the emblem of Love.
HELIOS (SOL).
The worship of Helios was introduced into Greece from Asia. According to
the earliest conceptions of the Greeks he was not only the sun-god, but
also the personification of life and all life-giving power, for light is
well known to be an indispensable condition of all healthy terrestrial
life. The worship of the sun was originally very widely spread, {62} not
only among the early Greeks themselves, but also among other primitive
nations. To us the sun is simply the orb of light, which, high above our
heads, performs each day the functions assigned to it by a mighty and
invisible Power; we can, therefore, form but a faint idea of the impression
which it produced upon the spirit of a people whose intellect was still in
its infancy, and who believed, with child-like simplicity, that every power
of nature was a divinity, which, according as its character was baleful or
beneficent, worked for the destruction or benefit of the human race.
Helios, who was the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, is described as
rising every morning in the east, preceded by his sister Eos (the Dawn),
who, with her rosy fingers, paints the tips of the mountains, and draws
aside that misty veil through which her brother is about to appear. When he
has burst forth in all the glorious light of day, Eos disappears, and
Helios now drives his flame-darting chariot along the accustomed track.
This chariot, which is of burnished gold, is drawn by four fire-breathing
steeds, behind which the young god stands erect with flashing eyes, his
head surrounded with rays, holding in one hand the reins of those fiery
coursers which in all hands save his are unmanageable.
When towards evening
he descends the curve[26] in order to cool his burning forehead in the
waters of the deep sea, he is followed closely by his sister Selene (the
Moon), who is now prepared to take charge of the world, and illumine with
her silver crescent the dusky night. Helios meanwhile rests from his
labours, and, reclining softly on the cool fragrant couch prepared for him
by the sea-nymphs, recruits himself for another life-giving, joy-inspiring,
and beauteous day.
It may appear strange that, although the Greeks considered the earth to be
a flat circle, no explanation is given of the fact that Helios sinks down
in the far {63} west regularly every evening, and yet reappears as
regularly every morning in the east. Whether he was supposed to pass
through Tartarus, and thus regain the opposite extremity through the bowels
of the earth, or whether they thought he possessed any other means of
making this transit, there is not a line in either Homer or Hesiod to
prove. In later times, however, the poets invented the graceful fiction,
that when Helios had finished his course, and reached the western side of
the curve, a winged-boat, or cup, which had been made for him by Hephæstus,
awaited him there, and conveyed him rapidly, with his glorious equipage, to
the east, where he recommenced his bright and glowing career.
This divinity was invoked as a witness when a solemn oath was taken, as it
was believed that nothing escaped his all-seeing eye, and it was this fact
which enabled him to inform Demeter of the fate of her daughter, as already
related. He was supposed to possess flocks and herds in various localities,
which may possibly be intended to represent the days and nights of the
year, or the stars of heaven.
Helios is said to have loved Clytie, a daughter of Oceanus, who ardently
returned his affection; but in the course of time the fickle sun-god
transferred his devotion to Leucothea, the daughter of Orchamus, king of
the eastern countries, which so angered the forsaken Clytie that she
informed Orchamus of his daughter's attachment, and he punished her by
inhumanly burying her alive. Helios, overcome with grief, endeavoured, by
every means in h