Chapter 27

Demeter and Persephone: The

Homeric Hymn to Demeter
 The Hymn to Demeter
• Was a “working version” of a myth.
• Used at ceremonies in honor of the goddess held at her
shrine in Eleusis, a town near Athens in Greece.
• Composed before the end of the seventh century B.C.E.
(699–600 B.C.E.).
• Explains the significance of Eleusis: It was the place
Demeter came to when she went to earth to look for her
daughter Persephone. The Eleusinians built a temple for
Demeter, and thus her visit led to the origin of her
worship there.
• The main celebration took place in early autumn, when
the drought of summer was ending and the fields were
becoming green.
 A Ritual of Demeter
• The festival lasted a week or more in Boedromion (September–October).
• On the 13th of the month, the young men of military age left Athens and went to
Eleusis to escort certain sacred objects (we don’t know what they were) back to
Athens.
• On the 15th, the Mysteries began with a proclamation at the Agora in Athens.
• On the 16th, those to be initiated purified themselves by bathing in the bay of
Phaleron.
• On the 19th, the initiands processed on the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis,
carrying the sacred objects and fasting on their journey. Ceremonies were performed
at the bridge over the river at the boundary between Eleusis and Athens, including
winding yellow woolen thread around the right hand and left leg of each initiand, and
ritual bathing in the Kephisos River. When the procession arrived at Eleusis, there
was a ritual meal and an all-night celebration that involved songs with obscene lyrics
and dance. This was open only to women.
• The actual Mysteries themselves were conducted in the Telesterion at Eleusis, a hall
that held several thousand people. We know they involved drinking a concoction of
barley, water, and herbs, and the Anaktoron, a small rectangular stone structure
within the Telesterion with a fire burning at its top. The ceremony took place in
darkness until the Anaktoron opened and the chief priest appeared. At this point, the
abduction of Persephone and the wanderings of Demeter are thought to have been
reenacted, perhaps in a way that involved the Homeric Hymn included in this chapter.
 Theology of the Worship of
Demeter

• Greeks of Homer’s time tended to be monists who

believed that a soul and body are really one inseparable
substance, the soul being the way the body moves or
acts.
• Dualists believe that the soul and body are separate.
• Gnosticism – The myth of Demeter represents a change
in perspective in Greek myth, toward a kind of dualism,
because it suggests that the soul is saved not through
the activities of the body, but through the knowledge
obtained by experiencing the mysteries.
 Theology, 2
• Demeter is the Greek goddess of grain and agriculture.
She is worshipped with her daughter Persephone or
Κόρη (Kore, “girl”), who represents the life force of the
grain and disappears from the earth when the seed is
put into the ground to die (as seed) and be born again
(as grain).
• Frazer suggested that since Demeter revitalizes the
seed, she became associated with giving new life to the
dead. This would explain her association in this story
with Aidoneus (Hades), the god of the dead, which
makes her the death god’s mother-in-law.
 The Style of the Poem
• The Hymn to Demeter was composed in the style of Homer.
• Homer was an oral poet who would perform his works from memory
or create them on the spot for his audience.
• He used modular units called “formulas” for building his poems.
• Each time a poem was performed, it would be slightly different,
because the poet would build it according to his moods and the
response of his audience.
• Examples of the formulas used in the poem:
– “Lovely haired” describes Demeter.
– “Slender-ankled” describes Persephone.
– “Far-seeing and loud-thundering” describes Zeus.
– The story also repeats longer sections, like “the many-named son of
Kronos carried her away against her will.”
Greek Gender Gap and the Hymn
to Demeter
• Helene Foley states that “[t]he Hymn repeats the pattern of sexual
tensions among male and female deities found in Hesiod and
prefigures the similar tensions that pervade Aeschylus’ Oresteia”
(116).
• The Hymn portrays the struggle of the mother, Demeter, to hold on
to her child against the wishes of the father. Ultimately, Demeter has
to give in to Zeus’ “patriarchal agenda” (Foley 169), but both the
Hymn and the ritual at Eleusis give elaborate testimony to the power
of her resistance and, as a result, to her limited autonomy.
• Clay notes that “As a whole the Hymn to Demeter may be
understood as an attempt to integrate, and hence to absorb, the cult
of Demeter and the message of Eleusis into the Olympian cosmos”
(265) represented by the poetry of Homer and Hesiod.
 Greek Marriage Customs
• Greek women and men entered marriage
at very different ages.
• Men tended to marry when they had
already established themselves, at 30 or
so.
• Women, on the other hand, married near
menarche, the start of their menstrual
period, at the age of 14 to 16.
 The Story of Persephone as a
Marriage
• Persephone is betrothed by her father Zeus to his
brother Aidoneus.
• She is not consulted; her intended husband is old
enough to be her father.
• Vase paintings and statues from the time period of the
Hymn often portray Aidoneus and Persephone as a
loving couple, the king and queen of Hades. Demeter is
also portrayed as blessing their marriage.
• The Hymn gives us much the same perspective. Near
the beginning of the story, Helios tells Demeter, who is
distraught at the loss of her daughter, “Not an unseemly
bridegroom among immortals is Aidoneus, Lord of
Many.”
 The Story of Persephone as a
Marriage, 2
• Near the end, Aidoneus tells Persephone, “I shall not be
an unfitting husband among the immortals, as I am
father Zeus’ own brother. When you are here you shall
be mistress of everything which lives and moves; your
honors among the immortals shall be the greatest, and
those who wrong you shall always be punished, if they
do not propitiate your spirit with sacrifices, performing
sacred rites and making due offerings” (p. 399).
• Rhea, Demeter’s mother, tells her, “Come and do not
nurse unrelenting anger against Kronion (Zeus), lord of
dark clouds; Soon make the life-giving seed grow for
men” (p. 401).
 Modern Feminist Views
of Demeter and Persephone
• The story attaches value to women and their emotions.
• The Hymn is an account of rape, which represents the intrusion of
men into the peaceful lives and loves of women, the triumph of
patriarchy, and the limitation of religion based on the feminine
principle.
• Feminist thinkers do not necessarily believe that the myth describes
a historical period, but rather they use it to re-imagine society and
their own role in it. This involves not allowing themselves to be
defined only by their relationships to men, but attaching more
importance to interactions between women.
• The poet Alma Luz Villaneuva represents a mother as finding a
stronger sense of herself through loving her daughter: “… your body
slid out of mine; daughter. Loving you, I loved myself – badly,
exquisitely.”
 Insights Provided by Myth
• Metaphysical Insight – Human limits and mortality (god and death).
• Cosmological Insight – The universe as understood by science.
• Sociological Insight – Humans in groups or social units.
• Psychological Insight – Humans as individuals.
• Aetiological Insight – The origin or cause of a custom or a fact of
the physical universe.
• Historical Insight – Verifiable historical events reflected in historical
stories.
• Anthropological Insight – The values and principles of a society.
 Which Insights Does the Myth of
Demeter and Persephone Provide?
Click Here for Answer:
• The myth explains the origin of worship at
Eleusis and the basis for building a temple Aetiological
there.
• We see the importance of Eleusis as an
agricultural state, which is why it could resist Historical
being completely swallowed up in the Athenian
empire.
• Persephone goes down into the underworld and
comes back, thus conquering death. Her Metaphysical
triumph over death suggests that human beings
can also, to some extent, overcome death.
• The myth explains the origin and the Cosmological
significance of the seasons. The science of the
time understood, as we do today, that certain
meteorological conditions are necessary for the
seed to grow.
 Which Insights, 2
Click Here for Answer:

• Although the marriage to Aidoneus Sociological

causes grief to Persephone and
Demeter, the story shows that the
girl and her family adjust to it.
• The myth shows us the grief of Psychological
Persephone and of Demeter, but it
also shows us that the girl
eventually comes to accept her
husband, at least in a limited way.
• We see both the subservience of Anthropological
women to men in Athenian society
and the basis of what can be their
terrifying strength in resisting and
defying the decisions of men.