Identifier: opencourt_nov1900caru (find matches)
Title: The Open court
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Carus, Paul, 1852-1919 Open Court Publishing company, Chicago
Subjects: Religion Religion and science
Publisher: Chicago : The Open Court Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Digitizing Sponsor: CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois

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Terra cotta relief. Demeter.(After Overbeck, Kunstinythologischer Atlas, pi. 16, As the sunshine in combination with the fertile soil producesvegetation, so Zeus begets with Demeter the goddess of flow^ersand fruits, Persephone, also called Kora, that is, the maiden. The Demeter myth is of great significance. The story goesthat Hades, the ruler of the dead, espied Persephone, the goddessof vegetation, and abducted her to his dreary abode in the UnderWorld. The bereaved mother, Demeter, was disconsolate; she 642 THE OPEN COURT. wandered all over the earth in search of her daughter, bestowingthe blessings of agriculture and civilisation wherever she went, andwas determined not to return to Olympus until Zeus should sendHermes down to Hades with the command to allow Persephoneto return to her mother. The god of the dead obeyed, but gaveher the seeds of the pomegranate to eat, which made her a denizen
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Demeter, the Queen of the Harvest Festivals.Fresco of Pompeii. (Ahis. Borb., VI., 54.) of the infernal regions forever. Thus the agreement arose thatfor two thirds of the year the maiden should return to the surfaceof the earth and for one third of the year, in winter, stay with hergrim husband. Hades. Demeter rejoiced at the restoration of herdaughter and had the Eleusinian Mysteries instituted to commem- ON GREEK RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 643 orate the loss and return of Persephone and to celebrate theseevents as a symbol of the constant reappearance of the life of na-ture and as a promise of the immortality of the human soul. The Demeter myth is the subject of a most beautiful classicalhymn, commonly ascribed to Homer, which, like many other piecesof Greek poetry, is untranslatable in its full grandeur and beauty.The lamentations of the goddess for her lost daughter are most pa-thetic. Demeter says : O Sun, compassionate me on behalf of my divine daughter, if ever either byword or de

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