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

78 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[063]The Green Festivaland the Festival ofthe Cornstalks atEleusis. Epithets ofDemeter referringto the corn.formed part of the Great Mysteries at Eleusis, 213 were no merewanton outbursts of licentious passion, but were deliberatelypractised as rites calculated to promote the fertility of the groundby means of homoeopathic or imitative magic. A like associationof what we might call indecency with rites intended to promotethe growth of the crops meets us in the Thesmophoria, a festivalof Demeter celebrated by women alone, at which the characterof the goddess as a source of fertility comes out clearly in thecustom of mixing the remains of the sacrificial pigs with theseed-corn in order to obtain a plentiful crop. We shall return tothis festival later on. 214Other festivals held at Eleusis in honour of Demeter andPersephone were known as the Green Festival and the Festivalof the Cornstalks. 215 Of the manner of their celebration weknow nothing except that they comprised sacrifices, which wereoffered to Demeter and Persephone. But their names sufficeto connect the two festivals with the green and the standingcorn. We have seen that Demeter herself bore the title ofGreen, and that sacrifices were offered to her under that titlewhich plainly aimed at promoting fertility. 216 Among the manyepithets applied to Demeter which mark her relation to thecorn may further be mentioned “Wheat-lover,” 217 “She of the213 Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 15 and 20, pp. 13 and 17 ed. Potter;Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 25-27, 35, 39.214 See below, p. 116; vol. ii. pp. 17 sqq.215 Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 2 No. 640; Ch. Michel,Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), No. 135, p. 145. To beexact, while the inscription definitely mentions the sacrifices to Demeter andPersephone at the Green Festival, it does not record the deities to whom thesacrifice at the Festival of the Cornstalks (τὴν τῶν Καλαμαίων θυσίαν) wasoffered. But mentioned as it is in immediate connexion with the sacrifices toDemeter and Persephone at the Green Festival, we may fairly suppose that thesacrifice at the Festival of the Cornstalks was also offered to these goddesses.216 See above, p. 42.217 Anthologia Palatina, vi. 36. 1 sq.