CC 303/352: Lecture Outline, October 2, 2001

Demeter and Persephone

I. The Myth (Homeric Hymn to Demeter)

• Persephone snatched
• Demeter searches 9 days with torches
• Hecate, carrying torch, tells her truth
• Demeter goes to Eleusis, veiled
• Taken in at home of Celeus and Metaneira and daughters
• Made to laugh by Iambe's dirty jokes
• Drinks kykeon: meal, water, and mint
• Caught trying to make Demophoon immortal by putting him in fire
• Reveals self, demands temple
• Famine all over earth
• Hermes goes to get Persephone
• She is tricked into eating pomegranate
• Persephone comes home, Zeus sends Rhea with message of arrangement
• Demeter teaches agriculture and rites through Triptolemus

II. What to do with this myth?

A. Aetiology

• no growth in winter
• problem: grain in Greece grew throughout winter

B. Death and rebirth of vegetation god/goddess,

• partner of earth goddess dies and is reborn as vegetation goes underground but then sprouts
• intimate relationship of reproduction and death
• Near Eastern Parallels

1. Inanna and Dumuzi
2. Isis and Osiris
3. Cybele and Attis
4. Aphrodite and Adonis

C. Ritual: The Eleusinian Mysteries

• 9-day annual festival in Athens and Eleusis

1. sacred objects taken to Athens: assembly of those to be initiated
2. pig to sea; participants are purified with pig
3. pig sacrificed: dies for participant
4. late-comers: myth says Asclepius arrived late
5. procession to Eleusis: apotropaic insults at bridge; statue of Iacchus carried (perhaps a name for Dionysus); torches at night

days 6-8: in Eleusis: fasting; drinking of kykeon; secrets in teleusterion: something shown, acted, and said (act out myth? grain? genitalia?)

day 9: back to Athens

• Importance of Eleusinian Mysteries

1. unifier of Greeks: open to all who spoke Greek except murderers
2. brings pleasurable existence after death

D. A charter myth for Athens

• Athens brings chance for pleasant afterlife: mysteries
• Athens brings agriculture: Triptolemus

E. Female initiation: the transition from maiden to wife

• marriage represents death of maiden, but also rebirth
• marriage represents separation from mother
• note importance of Hecate and Hermes, both associated with crossing boundaries
• cf. other rape myths (e.g., Europa, Daphne)
• cf. rituals surrounding female initiation (e.g., Brauron): separation, liminality, reintegration

F. Jungian archetypes

• For men: anima
• For women: mother and kore

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