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

56 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[044]Persephoneportrayed asthe young cornsprouting from theground.grasping sheaves of barley and poppies in both her hands. 155Indeed corn and poppies singly or together were a frequentsymbol of the goddess, as we learn not only from the testimonyof ancient writers 156 but from many existing monuments ofclassical art. 157 The naturalness of the symbol can be doubtedby no one who has seen—and who has not seen?—a field ofyellow corn bespangled thick with scarlet poppies; and we neednot resort to the shifts of an ancient mythologist, who explainedthe symbolism of the poppy in Demeter's hand by comparingthe globular shape of the poppy to the roundness of our globe,the unevenness of its edges to hills and valleys, and the hollowinterior of the scarlet flower to the caves and dens of the earth. 158If only students would study the little black and white booksof men less and the great rainbow-tinted book of nature more;if they would more frequently exchange the heavy air and thedim light of libraries for the freshness and the sunshine of theopen sky; if they would oftener unbend their minds by ruralwalks between fields of waving corn, beside rivers rippling byunder grey willows, or down green lanes, where the hedges arewhite with the hawthorn bloom or red with wild roses, theymight sometimes learn more about primitive religion than canbe gathered from many dusty volumes, in which wire-drawntheories are set forth with all the tedious parade of learning.Nowhere, perhaps, in the monuments of Greek art is thecharacter of Persephone as a personification of the young corn155 Theocritus, Idyl. vii. 155 sqq. That the sheaves which the goddess graspedwere of barley is proved by verses 31-34 of the poem.156 Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 11. 5; Cornutus, Theologiae GraecaeCompendium, 28, p. 56, ed. C. Lang; Virgil, Georg. i. 212, with the commentof Servius.157 See the references to the works of Overbeck and Farnell above. Forexample, a fine statue at Copenhagen, in the style of the age of Phidias,represents Demeter holding poppies and ears of corn in her left hand. SeeFarnell, op. cit. iii. 268, with plate xxviii.158 Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, p. 56 ed. C. Lang.