6 pleasant meadow of Nysa, that wonderful Nysa that meets us everywhere in the Dionysiak myth, when she is snatched to the Under-world by Aïdoneus Polydegmon,. the Many-receiver. Aïdoneus is a perfectly distinct concept from Zagreus, the Many-guest-receiving Zeus of the dead, but the idea is precisely the same in both cases; each is King of the Under-world, and as such each receives into his dark domains the falling leaf, the sinking splendour, and the multitude of them that sleep in the dust of the earth,' called euphemistically the greater number.' And who are the daughters of the all-fostering Okeanos, 'source of Deities? for if people's characters are to be determined to a great extent by the company they keep, should we succeed in ascertaining who are the playmates of Persephone, we shall derive material assistance respecting Persephone herself. Twenty-one names are given, for the line which represents Pallas and Artemis as being of the party may be unhesitatingly rejected. Among them we find Leukippe, White-horse-rider, an epithet of Persephone herself; 2 Phaino, the Apparent ; 3 Elektre, Beaming-female-sun; Ianthe, Violet-coloured; Melite, Sweet-one; Iakche, apparently a female reflection of the two-natured Iakchos;' Rodeia, Rosy; Kalliroe, Sweet-flowing; Okyroe, Swift-flowing; Chryseis, Golden; Ouranie, Heavenly-one; and Galaxure, nymph of the Galaxy, or Milky-way, the Assyrian river of night;' and the whole band, with the exception perhaps of Iakche and Tyche or Fortuna, the mysterious power that appears to govern human affairs, a purely mental concept, introduced here to complete the happy picture, represent the brilliant, beaming, flowing, pleasing, grateful, colour-splendours of 3 Pausanias, quoting this passage, 'as far as I am aware, to make mention of Tyche' (Paus, iv. 30). She is generally Good Fortune, and so Sôtêr, the Saviour (Ais. Ag. 664). earth beneath and heaven above, children of the light, and, with one or two exceptions, of the day, for it is dark Night that robs the world of colour, and even she is conquered by lovely Galaxure.' It will now be evident that Persephone or Apparent-Brilliance is the protagonist of the lovely Chorus, being their combination or epitome, and as such, she, and she only, is snatched away by the dark king; in taking her he took them all. From the happy fertile earth and the beautiful benignant heaven, the bestower of bright sunshine and the refreshing rain, springs the green earth-mantle, chequered with the hues and perfumed with the odours of all flowers, expanding smilingly beneath the bright beams of Phoibos Apollon, 'a thing of beauty and a joy for ever,' for Persephone is the glad light and life of the apparent world around, that bursts forth, and dies, and rises in immortal being and glory, no mere Phanes or earthly spirit of material visibility, but a concept infinitely higher and purer, nobler far and more spiritual, and as such is pictured as a beautiful maiden, stainless, innocent, and gladsome. Of all the truth-spangled legends which our earlier brethren of mankind have left us, I know of none more exquisite, and in its sequel more august, than this. To thoughtful minds at Eleusis or elsewhere, the mythic history must have seemed replete with hope for the future; to the acceptor of Christianity it will ever appear as a revelation of the Gospel, or glad tidings of the Invisible God, written in indelible characters upon that world which is His own; for He has not left Himself without witness, and the rain from heaven and the fruitful seasons that fill our hearts with food and gladness,1 the yellow-haired Demeter and the bright Persephone, speak to the godly of that Zeus Hypsistos who has prepared still better things for 1 Acts, iv. 17. them that love Him. The Founder of the Christian religion did not disdain to use the simile of the buried and dying grain in illustration of His course and purpose, and the greatest of His followers in that mighty exhortation to the Church of God at Korinthos, which we still read by every open grave in token of belief in our ultimate triumph over all the chthonian powers of the Under-world, uses language and illustrations which to the Korinthians, accustomed as they were to the neighbouring ritual of Eleusis, must have seemed at once familiar in themselves, and yet new in a strange and splendid application. No trace of Persephone as the Awful Damsel appears in the Homerik Hymn; even when she returns from the Underworld her girlish delight at again meeting her Mother is the most prominent feature in the representation: but, as a matter of necessity, the bride of Aïdoneus must partake of his nature and be in harmony with his domain. The sombre change which steals over her is felicitously expressed by a modern poetess:- The eyelids droop with light oppressed, And sunny wafts that round her stir, Calm Queen of Hades, art thou she The greater world may near the less, Of all the darkness that she made; And so in the Homerik Poems she becomes Hagne the 6 and bears equal sway with her husband in the Underworld. 6 She is represented,' says Mr. Gladstone, as ruling together with Aïdoneus, and by no means merely as his wife. Introduced together with him into the legend of Phoenix by his father, and also by Althaia, she seems even to be charged in chief with the sovereignty. She gathers the women-shades for Odysseus, and she disperses them. It is she who, as he fears, may send forth the head of Gorgo should he tarry over long; who may have deluded him with an Eidolon or shadow in lieu of a substance, who endows Teiresias with the functions of a seer. Notwithstanding the high rank of Aïdoneus, as the brother of Zeus, she is the principal, and he is the secondary, figure in the weird scenery of the Eleventh Odyssey." The goddess who represents the teeming earth,' says Donaldson, weds her daughter to Plutus, or Pluto, the owner of the treasures hidden below the surface of the ground, either actually, as metallic riches, or potentially, as the germs of vegetable growth.'2 This connection between concealed wealth and the Two Goddesses is very clearly brought out at the close of the Hymn. Highly happy is he, whomsoever of men on the earth they readily love. For immediately they send Ploutos as a sojourner to his noble dwelling place, who gives wealth to mortal men.' Thus in the Hesiodik Theogony Demeter is said to be the mother of Ploutos. One or two other points in the Hymn require special note. It will be observed that Dionysos Iakchos, at all events eo nomine, does not appear on the scene in it, although his reflection, the nymph Iakche, is found among the train of Persephone. According to the later legend, Iakchos assisted Demeter in her search, and carried a flaming torch, kindled at seq. Juv. Mundi, 309-10. 2 Theatre of the Greeks, 19; cf. Mythol of the Aryan Nations, ii. 296 et 3 Theog. 969. Mount Aetna, and in the Temple of Demeter at Athenai his statue, holding a torch, was placed by that of the Two Goddesses. But in the Hymn it is as Helios, the Sun who sees and knows all things, or in his solar phase, that the god appears as the friend and assistant of the Mother. This is interesting as showing the connection and even identity of the 'one Helios, one Dionysos.' The treatment of the various personages in the Hymn is thoroughly simple and un-Semitic, but Helios is not identical with the Aryan Apollon, and as Mr. Gladstone has shown, is a being of Semitic proclivities. The introduction of Helios Dionysos into the Eleusinian ritual will be noticed subsequently.3 Persephone, while in the Under-world, eats of the seed of the mystic pomegranate, Rhoia, a name closely resembling that of the Goddess-Mother Rhea. This fruit, in Hebrew Rimmon, both from its shape and the multiplicity of its seeds, was an emblem of the fruitful female, while one derivation connects it also with the Linga. It stands, therefore, anthropomorphically speaking, as a euphemism for the reproductive powers, and in the myth signifies that the Apparent-brightness of the world when buried in the earth becomes associated with the reproductive powers of nature, and so must share with them. their concealment in the Under-world. Thus the statue of Here, the Matron-goddess, in her great temple near Mykene, held a pomegranate in one hand, and the fruit was a usual symbol in the Mysteries.5 The rape of Persephone being viewed Euemeristically, great differences not unnaturally arose as to the locality where it occurred. The author of the Argonautika says, 1 Paus. i. 2. 2 Juv. Mundi, 321 et seq. 3 Subsec. ii. 4 Paus. ii. 17. Clem. Alex. Protrepts. ii. 22. Vide VIII. ii. Pomegranate. Pau sanias noticed that the Arkadians brought all fruits, except the pome granate, into the temple of Despoina, the Mistress, an epithet specially applied by them to Persephone (Paus. viii. 37). |