Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

DEMETER AND IASlON. 307
the origin and nature of the story. Both are alike laid bare CHAP.
by a comparison which has shown that every incident may .
be matched with incidents in other legends so far resembling
each other as to leave no room for questioning their real
identity, yet so far unlike as to preclude the idea that the
one was borrowed from or directly suggested by the other.
But the Eleusinian could adduce in evidence of his belief not
only the mysteries which were there enacted, but the geo-
graphical names which the story consecrated ; and here he
found himself in the magic circle from which the inhabitants
of Athens or Argos, Arkadia or Lykia, Delos or Ortygia,
could never escape. Eleusis itself was a town or village in
the land of the dawn-goddess Athene, and the name denoted
simply the approach of Demeter to greet her returning child.
If, again, it pleased the Athenians to think that Persephone
was stolen away from Kolonos, or even from the spot where
she met her mother, there were other versions which localised
this incident on some Nysaian plain, as in the Homeric
A nL „
hymn, in the Sicilian Enna, or near the well of Arethousa.
As we might expect, the myth of Demeter is intertwined Demeter
with the legends of many other beings, both human and an ,
divine. Like Herakles and Zeus, she has^ in many lands,
many loves and many children. As the wife of Poseidon
she is the mother of Despoina and Orion. 1 The earth must
love the beautifully tinted skies of morning ; and thus Demeter
loves Iasion, the son of Zeus and Hemera, the heaven
and the day, or of Minos and the nymph Pyronea, 2 and
becomes the mother of Plouton or Ploutos, the god who
guards the treasures of the earth, and whom the Latins
identified with Hades. She must hate those who spoil her
trees and waste her fruits ; hence she punishes with fearful
1 Max
Miiller, Lectures, second series, a like kind. There are but few which
517 ; Apollod. iii. 6, 8. would be found to withstand the test of
- The name Minos, it has been already philological analysis ; but even where this
said, is, like Menu, the same word as is the case, we are fully justified in
•man the measurer or thinker. But selecting those versions which explain
Minos himself is the husband of Pasi- themselves. The mere fact that in one
phae the light-giver, and the father of of them Iasion is called a son of Zeus
Ariadne who guides Theseus to the den and Hemera, is sufficient evidence that
of the Minotauros. It is scarcely neces- this was one way of accounting for his
sary to give all the names which occur existence ; and this phrase is transin
the story of Iasion or other myths of parent.
(1 la "