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

68 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[055]which he represented Demeter instructing the hero to carry theseed of the fruits which she had bestowed on men to all thecoasts of Southern Italy, 187 from which we may infer that thecities of Magna Graecia were among the number of those thatsent the thank-offering of barley and wheat every year to Athens.Again, in the fourth century before our era Xenophon representsCallias, the braggart Eleusinian Torchbearer, addressing theLacedaemonians in a set speech, in which he declared that“Our ancestor Triptolemus is said to have bestowed the seed ofDemeter's corn on the Peloponese before any other land. Howthen,” he asked with pathetic earnestness, “can it be right thatyou should come to ravage the corn of the men from whom youreceived the seed?” 188 Again, writing in the fourth century beforeour era Isocrates relates with a swell of patriotic pride how, in hersearch for her lost daughter Persephone, the goddess Demetercame to Attica and gave to the ancestors of the Athenians thetwo greatest of all gifts, the gift of the corn and the gift of themysteries, of which the one reclaimed men from the life of beastsand the other held out hopes to them of a blissful eternity beyondthe grave. The antiquity of the tradition, the orator proceedsto say, was no reason for rejecting it, but quite the contraryit furnished a strong argument in its favour, for what manyaffirmed and all had heard might be accepted as trustworthy.“And moreover,” he adds, “we are not driven to rest our casemerely on the venerable age of the tradition; we can appeal tostronger evidence in its support. For most of the cities sendus every year the first-fruits of the corn as a memorial of thatancient benefit, and when any of them have failed to do so thePythian priestess has commanded them to send the due portionsof the fruits and to act towards our city according to ancestralcustom. Can anything be supported by stronger evidence than bythe oracle of god, the assent of many Greeks, and the harmony187 Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. i. 12. 2.188 Xenophon, Historia Graeca, vi. 3. 6.