Lecture 7: Demeter and Persephone

I. Demeter = Ceres

A. Origins and Family

1. Pre-Hellenic Earth goddess: de, "wheat" + mêter, "mother"

2. Principal partner: none. Love affairs with: Iasion --> Plutus, "Wealth of the Earth" and Philomelus; Zeus --> Persephone; Poseidon --> Arion

B. Functions

1. Agriculture, especially grain: food = "the groats of Demeter"

2. Eleusinian Mysteries

C. Attributes

1. Motherly

2. Garlanded and holding wheat / barley shaft

3. Korê, "Persephone" (Persephone = seed grain / Demeter = grain ready for bread)

D. Places of worship

1. Extensive; Eleusis (Athens)

E. Major myths

1. Eats Pelops' shoulder

2. Homeric Hymn to Demeter

 II. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

A. Structure:

• Persephone snatched (Rape of Persephone 1 2 3)
• 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: barley-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

B. Themes

1. The quest = "to get"

• to realize some deficiency
• to have or attain some knowledge or information about the thing wanted
• to decide to begin a search
• to go out and meet partners who may prove to be helpful or antagonistic
• to discover the object and appropriate it by force, guile, or negotiation
• bring back the object

2. Gift-exchange and the "traffic of women"

3. Xenia

4. Grief, wrath, and withdrawl

5. Liminality: "of or at the limen" = "threshold" (169ff)

6. Distance of the gods: near and far

C. Interpretations

1. Etiological / Nature Allegory

• Death and rebirth of vegetation god/goddess:Near Eastern Parallels:
  • i. Inanna and Dumuzi; Isis and Osiris

    ii. Problems

2. Ritual: The Eleusinian Mysteries (Nine-day annual festival in Athens and Eleusis = line 43 "For nine who days mighty Deo wandered the face of the earth")

• Day:
  • 1: Sacred objects taken to Athens: assembly of those to be initiated

    2: Piglet and participant are purified in the sea

    3: Pig sacrificed: dies for participant (symbolic of Persephone sinking into the earth)

    4: Late-comers: myth says Asclepius arrived late

    5: Procession to Eleusis: rhythmic shouts (perhaps in imitation of Demeter's mourning), apotropaic insults at bridge (Iambe); statue of Iacchus carried (perhaps a name for Dionysus); torches at night (line 45: Demeter carried torches in search)

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

    9: Back to Athens

• Importance of Eleusinian Mysteries:
  • i. Unifier of Greeks: open to all who spoke Greek except murderers

    ii. Brings pleasurable existence after death (442-45)

    iii. Athens (through Triptolemus) brings agriculture and civilization to the world. First Fruits.

    iv. Responsibility for Mysteries belongs solely with Demeter, not Zeus. One of the few triumphs for women.

3. Female initiation: the transition from maiden to wife (Marriage of Persephone and Hades)

• Marriage as a "linkage"
• Marriage represents death of maiden (cf. "bride of Hades")
  • Object-relation perspective of Freudian Theory
• Marriage represents separation from mother
• Note importance of Hecate and Hermes, both associated with crossing boundaries