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

70 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)Even after foreignstates ceased tosend first-fruits ofthe corn to Eleusis,they continuedto acknowledgethe benefit whichthe Athenianshad conferredon mankind bydiffusing amongthem Demeter'sgift of the corn.Testimony ofthe Sicilianhistorian Diodorus.Testimony ofCicero andHimerius.with gilt horns, not only to the two Goddesses but also to the God(Pluto), Triptolemus, Eubulus, and Athena; and the remainder ofthe grain was to be sold and with the produce votive offeringswere to be dedicated with inscriptions setting forth that they hadbeen dedicated from the offerings of first-fruits, and recordingthe names of all the Greeks who sent the offerings to Eleusis.The decree ends with a prayer that all who comply with theseinjunctions or exhortations and render their dues to the city ofAthens and to the Two Goddesses, may enjoy prosperity togetherwith good and abundant crops. Writing in the second centuryof our era, under the Roman empire, the rhetorician Aristidesrecords the custom which the Greeks observed of sending yearby year the first-fruits of the harvest to Athens in gratitude forthe corn, but he speaks of the practice as a thing of the past. 191We may suspect that the tribute of corn ceased to flow fromfar countries to Athens, when, with her falling fortunes anddecaying empire, her proud galleys had ceased to carry the terrorof the Athenian arms into distant seas. But if the homage wasno longer paid in the substantial shape of cargoes of grain, itcontinued down to the latest days of paganism to be paid inthe cheaper form of gratitude for that inestimable benefit, whichthe Athenians claimed to have received from the Corn Goddessand to have liberally communicated to the rest of mankind.Even the Sicilians, who, inhabiting a fertile corn-growing island,worshipped Demeter and Persephone above all the gods andclaimed to have been the first to receive the gift of the cornfrom the Corn Goddess, 192 nevertheless freely acknowledgedthat the Athenians had spread, though they had not originated,191 Aristides, Panathen. and Eleusin., vol. i. pp. 167 sq., 417 ed. G. Dindorf(Leipsic, 1829).192 Diodorus Siculus, v. 2 and 4; Cicero, In C. Verrem, act. ii. bk. iv. chapters48 sq. Both writers mention that the whole of Sicily was deemed sacred toDemeter and Persephone, and that corn was said to have grown in the islandbefore it appeared anywhere else. In support of the latter claim DiodorusSiculus (v. 2. 4) asserts that wheat grew wild in many parts of Sicily.