Lecture Seven

Demeter, Persephone, and the Conquest of Death.

 

The myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades is recounted in one of the richest works of classical antiquity, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

-          The Homeric Hymns is a series of poems, ranging from only a few lines to several hundred lines, in honor of various gods.

-          The poems are called “Homeric” because they are written in the same dialect of Greek and using the same meter.

-          They were composed at different times; the Hymn to Demeter is one of the oldest, dating from sometime between 650 and 550 BC.

-          This myth lends itself to a variety of interpretations and viewpoints, because it deals with questions of gender roles, sexuality marriage customs, the relative power of different deities, and human mortality.

-          This myth is one of the few that has a clear connection with a specific ritual, the Eleusinian mysteries, held at Eleusis, near Athens.

-          It is also one of the most transparently etiological of surviving myths, because it provides an explanation for the existence of the seasons.

The basic story of the abduction of Persephone by Hades is fairly simple

-          Demeter, goddess of grain and agriculture, had a daughter, Persephone. Zeus was her father.

-          With Zeus’s permission, Hades seized Persephone one day as she was gathering flowers and took her to the Underworld to be his wife.

-          Demeter wandered the world looking for her daughter. During her wanderings, she visited the town of Eleusis, near Athens.

-          Eventually, Demeter caused a famine by refusing to let grain grow. Zeus ordered Hades to return Persephone so that humankind would not starve to death.

-          Persephone had eaten a pomegranate seed while she was in Tartaros, which meant that she could not leave Hades permanently. 

-          This apparently reflects the idea that eating in the Underworld meant one had to stay there.

-          Under Zeus’s mediation, Demeter agreed to compromise whereby Persephone spends one-third of the year in Hades and two-thirds with her mother on Olympus.

There is more to this story than meets the eye. As told in the Homeric Hymns, Demeter’s search for her missing daughter and its aftermath give us a window onto many aspects of ancient life.

-          First, the story reflects marriage practices.

-          A marriage was a contract between the husband and the bride’s father. Zeus gives Hades permission to take Persephone.

-          Marriage of an only daughter with no brothers to her uncle was acceptable. Such a girl was called an epikleros.  

-          Human marriages were patrilocal.

-          Human mothers and daughters would have greatly restricted contact after marriage. Thus, sorrow was a natural reaction to such contact after marriage. Thus, sorrow was a natural reaction to such an arrangement.

-          The story reflects the human experience of death and separation.

-          Olympians can’t or don’t go to Tartaros. Hades and Hermes are exceptions to this rule.

-          Demeter’s anguish is very close to what a human feels at a loved one’s death.

-          This is the only time a god or goddess feel this sort of mourning for another deity.

-          A symbolic connection between death and marriage is common in Greek literature, in part a reflection of high rates of maternal mortality.

-          The story paints a picture of the gods’ attitude toward and relationship with humans.

-          Human are useful to the gods but are not objects of affections.

-          Zeus does not persuade Demeter to lift the famine because he loves humans, or because humans are innocent, or for any other such compassionate reason.

-          He wants the famine lifted because without humans, there will be no one to give the gods sacrifices.

Along with the account of Persephone’s abduction, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter also contains the story of Demeter’s visit to Metaneira, the queen of Eleusis.

-          Demeter wandered to Eleusis, where she met the daughter of Queen Metaneira. Demeter was disguised as an old woman and was pitied.

-          She offered her services to the queen’s daughters as a nanny for their baby brother, demophoon.

-          Demophoon is described as a late-born and much desired son; in a male-centered culture, such a baby would be doubly precious.

-          Infant mortality was high; an old woman who had many years of experience in caring for infants and children would be a logical choice as a nanny.

-          Demeter sets out to make Demophoon immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and laying him in the fire each night.

-          When metaneira observes what she was doing, she is horrified and cries out in anguish.

-          Demeter becomes angry and throws the child to the ground, declaring that she will no longer make him immortal.

-          The hymn does not recount Demophoon’s fate, but Apollodorus and other authors say that he died.

Like the story of Persephone, the Demophoon story offers a window into the nature of the gods it describes and the society that created them.

-          Demeter seems to be using Demophoon as a Persephone-substitute. It is noteworthy that she picks a male child.

-          Demeter is following the same pattern as Gaia and Rheia before her, trying to enlist the help of an infant male son against an oppressive adult father.

-          A male child will not be taken away from her through marriage.

-          Demeter’s attempt does not work. This is consistent with the picture given by Hesiod that the order of the universe under Zeus is fixed. Where Gaia and Rheia could secede, Demeter fails.

-          By trying to immortalize a human child, Demeter is not only providing a substitute child for herself; she is also redressing the balance against hades.

-          Finally, we see again the gods’ concern with human emotion and their tendency to see humans as useful, rather than as object of affection.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is an almost perfect example of the complex and multivalent nature of myth. As such, it can be analyzed according to various theories.

-          Those who espouse Jungian psychology can see the archetypes of mother, maiden, and crone very clearly in the hymn.

-          The hymn can be read, in a more Freudian way, as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for woman or for humans in general.

-          Woman must often have wished to regain their married daughters and daughters, to return to their mothers. Human mother couldn’t unmarry daughters, but Demeter can.

-          All human beings with that death could be reversed. In this case, it is; Persephone returns.

-          Structualists can find many contradictions to be mediated: acceptance of death, desire to retain childhood, and so on.

-          Adherets of the ritual theory can point to the Eleusinian mysteries.

-          Even Frazer’s dying god is not too far a stretch, because Persephone can easily be read as representing the grain.

-          None of these theories seem to account for the entire appeal of the hymn. Each can be used to elucidate a portion of the myth but not its entirety.