Demeter and Persephone

CC 303 Intro to Classical Mythology - Fall 2009
Department of Classics, University of Texas at Austin, Prof. Lawrence Kim

I. Names to Remember

Demeter (Ceres), Persephone (Kore, Proserpine), Hades (Pluto, Dis)
Eleusis, Eleusinian Mysteries, Pelops

II. Lecture Outline

1. Demeter
   1. Sister of Zeus, Daughter of Cronus/Saturn
   2. Goddess of Grain, Agriculture, Fertility
      
   3. Symbols: Wheat (Ceres = cereal); Torch
2. Persephone (Demeter's Daughter by Zeus)
   1. Hades/Pluto abducts her while she is picking flowers
   2. Demeter searches the world for her, carrying torch(es)
   • Tantalus Episode: Serves son Pelops as dinner to gods
   • Distracted by grief, Demeter eats Pelops' shoulder
     
   • Fasts for nine days, doesn't bathe
   3. Helios (Sun) reveals that Zeus has given her to Hades
   • In anger, Demeter leaves Olympus in disguise
   • Comes to Eleusis, near Athens
     
   • Finally breaks fast and is made to laugh
   4. Creates famine on earth - nothing will grow
   5. Zeus sends Hermes/Mercury to bring Persephone back
   • But she eats (or is forced to eat) a pomegranate seed
   • She must spend one-third of the year in the underworld
   6. Persephone = Queen of the Underworld
3. The Eleusinian Mysteries
   1. Festival celebrating Demeter and Persephone near Athens
   • Many specifics unknown because of secrecy
   • Lasted nine days, like Demeter's fast
     
   • Involved 14 mile procession from Athens to Eleusis
     
   2. Open to all Greek-speakers, slave and free, men and women
   3. Move from fear and disorientation to joy and confidence
   • Symbolic death and rebirth
   • Brings happiness and solace; promise of a better life after death
   4. Myth: Joy of reunion between daughter and mother
4. Interpretations
   1. Agricultural Myth
      1. Hades = earth, Persephone the grain buried in the earth
      2. Her return = growth of the new crop
   2. Marriage Myth
      1. Passage from childhood to adulthood
      2. Death to childhood, rebirth as married woman
      3. Plucked like a flower (narcissus); loses virginity
      4. Taken from mother into an unfamiliar foreign household
      5. Demeter's grief over the loss of her daughter like a mother's
      6. Curiosity about flower = desire to leave the mother
      7. The necessary separation between mother and daughter
      8. Pomegranate = she can never go back to her former state
   3. Hero Myth (Demeter)
      1. Wrath, Withdrawal, Destruction, and Return
      2. Demeter's Wandering and Journey
      3. Disguise and Discovery

III. Images

1. The Rape of Proserpine, Giancarlo Bernini. Galleria Borghese, Rome.
2. The Rape of Persephone. Detail of the painted interior of the "Tomb of Persephone" at Vergina.
3. Hades and Kore Persephone. Clay pinax with bas-relief from Locri Epizephyrii, early 5th c. BCE. Hades and Persephone enthroned; the former holds celery stalks, the latter, wheat shafts; rooster and torch.
4. Proserpine. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1877. Tate Gallery, London.
5. Ceres Enthroned. Michele Pannonio, c. 1450-60. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
6. Demeter and Kore (Persephone). Detail from Athenian lekythos c. 450-425 BC. National Museum, Athens.
7. The Rape of Persephone. Niccolò dell'Abate, 1537. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
8. Persephone's Return. Attic Vase.
   
9. The Return of Persephone. Frederic Leighton, c. 1890-91. City Art Gallery, Leeds.