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

110 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)As goddesses of thecorn Demeter andPersephone came tobe associated withthe ideas of deathand resurrection.and daughter is suggested, not only by the close resemblanceof their artistic types, but also by the official title of “the TwoGoddesses” which was regularly applied to them in the greatsanctuary at Eleusis without any specification of their individualattributes and titles, 307 as if their separate individualities hadalmost merged in a single divine substance. 308Surveying the evidence as a whole, we may say that fromthe myth of Demeter and Persephone, from their ritual, fromtheir representations in art, from the titles which they bore, fromthe offerings of first-fruits which were presented to them, andfrom the names applied to the cereals, we are fairly entitledto conclude that in the mind of the ordinary Greek the twogoddesses were essentially personifications of the corn, andthat in this germ the whole efflorescence of their religion findsimplicitly its explanation. But to maintain this is not to denythat in the long course of religious evolution high moral andspiritual conceptions were grafted on this simple original stockand blossomed out into fairer flowers than the bloom of thebarley and the wheat. Above all, the thought of the seed buriedin the earth in order to spring up to new and higher life readilysuggested a comparison with human destiny, and strengthenedthe hope that for man too the grave may be but the beginning ofa better and happier existence in some brighter world unknown.This simple and natural reflection seems perfectly sufficient toexplain the association of the Corn Goddess at Eleusis with the307 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 2 Nos. 20, 408, 411, 587,646, 647, 652, 720, 789. Compare the expression διώνυμοι θέαι applied tothem by Euripides, Phoenissae, 683, with the Scholiast's note.308 The substantial identity of Demeter and Persephone has been recognisedby some modern scholars, though their interpretations of the myth do notaltogether agree with the one adopted in the text. See F. G. Welcker,Griechische Götterlehre (Göttingen, 1857-1862), ii. 532; L. Preller, in Pauly'sRealencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vi. 106 sq.; F.Lenormant, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques etRomaines, i. 2. pp. 1047 sqq.