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Homer, in the Iliad, knows Demeter, but only as the goddess of the fields, the originator and patroness of the labours of the countryman, in their yearly order. She stands, with her hair yellow like the ripe corn, at the threshing-floor, and takes her share in the toil, the heap of grain whitening, as the flails, moving in the wind, disperse the chaff. Out in the fresh fields, she yields to the embraces of Iasion, to the extreme jealousy of Zeus, who slays her mortal lover with lightning. The flowery town of Pyrasus–the wheat- town,–an ancient place in Thessaly, is her sacred precinct. But when Homer gives a list of the orthodox gods, her name is not mentioned.

Homer, in the Odyssey, knows Persephone also, but not as Kore; only as the queen of the dead–epaine Persephone[1]–dreadful Persephone, the goddess of destruction and death, according to the apparent import of her name.[2] She accomplishes men’s evil prayers; she is the mistress and manager of men’s shades, to which she can dispense a little more or less of life, dwelling in her mouldering palace on the steep shore of the Oceanus, with its groves of barren willows and tall poplars. But that Homer knew her as the daughter of Demeter there are no signs; and of his knowledge of the rape of Persephone there is only the faintest sign,–he names Hades by the golden reins of his chariot, and his beautiful horses.

[Footnote 1:
Transliteration: epaine Persephone. Translation: “dread Persephone.” See, for example, Odyssey, Book 10.490 and 563. ]

[Footnote 2:
“According to the apparent import of her name”; Pater likely refers to the etymology of “Persophone”–“bringer of destruction.” ]

The main theme, then, the most characteristic peculiarities, of the story, as subsequently developed, are not to be found, expressly, in the true Homer. We have in him, on the one hand, Demeter, as the perfectly fresh and blithe goddess of the fields, whose children, if she has them, must be as the perfectly discreet and peaceful, unravished Kore; on the other hand, we have Persephone, as the wholly terrible goddess of death, who brings to Ulysses the querulous shadows of the dead, and has the head of the gorgon Medusa in her keeping. And it is only when these two contrasted images have been brought into intimate relationship, only when Kore and Persephone have been identified, that the deeper mythology of Demeter begins.

This combination has taken place in Hesiod; and in three lines of the Theogony we find the stealing of Persephone by Aidoneus,[3]*–one of those things in Hesiod, perhaps, which are really older than Homer. Hesiod has been called the poet of helots, and is thought to have preserved some of the traditions of those earlier inhabitants of Greece who had become a kind of serfs; and in a certain shadowiness in his conceptions of the gods, contrasting with the concrete and heroic forms of the gods of Homer, we may perhaps trace something of the quiet unspoken brooding of a subdued people–of that silently dreaming temper to which the story of Persephone properly belongs. However this may be, it is in Hesiod that the two images, unassociated in Homer–the goddess of summer and the goddess of death, Kore and Persephone–are identified with much significance; and that strange, dual being makes her first appearance, whose latent capabilities the poets afterwards developed; among the rest, a peculiar blending of those two contrasted aspects, full of purpose for the duly chastened intelligence; death, resurrection, rejuvenescence.–Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the dust!

[Footnote 3:

*Theogony, 912-14:

Transliteration:
Autar ho Demetros polyphorbes es lechos elthen
e teke Persephonen leukolenon, hen Aidoneus
herpasen hes para metros, edoke de metieta Zeus.

Translation: “And he came to bountiful Demeter’s bed, / and she gave birth to white-armed Persephone, whom Aidoneus / took from her mother’s side; but Zeus, wise counsellor, gave her to him.” Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Theogony. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press. London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
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