The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

Chapter II. Demeter And Persephone. 109they were capable of doing so is proved by the simple fact thatthey regularly represented the Earth Goddess by a type whichdiffered widely both from that of Demeter and from that ofPersephone. 303 Not only so, but they sometimes set the twotypes of the Earth Goddess and the Corn Goddess (Demeter) sideby side as if on purpose to demonstrate their difference. Thusat Patrae there was a sanctuary of Demeter, in which she andPersephone were portrayed standing, while Earth was representedby a seated image; 304 and on a vase-painting the Earth Goddessis seen appropriately emerging from the ground with a horn ofplenty and an infant in her uplifted arms, while Demeter andPersephone, scarcely distinguishable from each other, stand atfull height behind her, looking down at her half-buried figure,and Triptolemus in his wheeled car sits directly above her. 305 Inthis instructive picture, accordingly, we see grouped together theprincipal personages in the myth of the corn: the Earth Goddess,the two Goddesses of the old and the new corn, and the herowho is said to have been sent forth by the Corn Goddess to sowthe seed broadcast over the earth. Such representations seem toprove that the artists clearly distinguished Demeter from the EarthGoddess. 306 And if Demeter did not personify the earth, can there [090]be any reasonable doubt that, like her daughter, she personifiedthe corn which was so commonly called by her name from thetime of Homer downwards? The essential identity of mother303 A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des classischen Altertums, i. 577 sq.; Drexler,s.v. "Gaia," in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i.1574 sqq.; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. (Oxford, 1907) p.27.304 Pausanias, vii. 21. 11. At Athens there was a sanctuary of Earth theNursing-Mother and of Green Demeter (Pausanias, i. 22. 3), but we do notknow how the goddesses were represented.305 L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, iii. 256 with plate xxi. b.306 The distinction between Demeter (Ceres) and the Earth Goddess is clearlymarked by Ovid, Fasti, iv. 673 sq.:“Officium commune Ceres et Terra tuentur;Haec praebet causam frugibus, illa locum.”