Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

292 Daimon and Hero [ch.
The panspermia has not, I think, been rightly understood. In
commenting on it before 1
, misled by the gift-theory of sacrifice,
I took it to be merely a 'supper for the souls.' No doubt as
such it was in later days regarded, when primitive magical rites
had to be explained on Olympian principles. But it was, to begin
with, much more. The ghosts had other work to do than to eat
their supper and go. They took that 'supper,' that panspermia,,
with them down to the world below and brought it back in the
autumn a pankarpia. The dead are Chthonioi, ' earth-people,'
Demetreioi, ' Demeter's people 2 ,' and they do Demeter's work, her
:!
work and that of Kore the Maiden, with her Kathodos and Anodos .
An Athenian at the Anthesteria would never have needed S. Paul's 4
angry objurgation
:
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die : and
that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare
grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.
It is sown a panspermia, it is reaped a pankarpia.
The lexica regularly define panspermia and pankarpia by
each other, and they are right, for fruit is seed, but a distinction
must be observed. The living and the dead seem to have as it
were a sort of counter-claim on the fruits of the earth. The live
man wants the fruits of the earth that he may eat them and so
live ; the dead man wants them as seed that he may take it with
him down below and tend it and give it a 'body' and send it
back, bring it back as fruit. The autumn is the living man's
great time. Then he takes most of the fruit and grain, eats
it and stores it for himself, but even then he saves a little for the
dead, offering them ar.apyai, because only so can his seed grow
and prosper. The spring, the Anthesteria, is the dead man's
time, for the seeds belong mainly to him. It is this cycle that
haunted the mind of Aeschylus 5
, only
he abstracts it somewhat,
1 Prolegomena, p. 37. If my present theory, suggested to me in part by Mr
Cornforrl, be right, the cooking of the panspermia must be a late invention added
when it came to be regarded as a food.
2 Plut. de facie in orb. lunae 28 koX roiis vtKpovs 'AOyvaioi. ArjurjTpeiovi divofxafov to
iraXaiov.
3 For the dpibneva of the Kathodos and Anodos see Prolegomena, p. 123, and for
the Anodos of the Maiden, p. 276. See also infra, chapter ix.
4 1 Cor. xv. 20 ff.
5 Choeph. 127
xai yaiav ai/TTjv, r/ to. iravra TtKTtTat
6pi\paaa. r aiitiis Ttovde KvpLa Xanftavei
and Dr Verrall ad loc. For the whole symbolism and for the Eoman custom of