Page:Greek and Roman Mythology.djvu/85

 THE GREEK GODS 71 96. In Homer, too, Demeter, ' of the beautiful ringlets/ who is the wife of Zeus, and is worshiped in the Thes- salian Pyrasus ('land of wheat '), is only the goddess of the cultivation of grain, so that she seems to dwell not on Olympus, but in the grainfield itself. The sacred hymn containing her legendary history, a hymn com- posed in Attica before the time of Solon, represents her in the same way : ' Core, her daughter by Zeus, is gathering flowers together with the Oceaninae, i.e. the daughters of Oceanus, in a meadow situated, according to the later version, near Enna in Sicily. When, among other flowers, she plucks the flower of death, the nar- cissus, suddenly the ground opens (c/. the German SMusselblume, Himmelsschliissel), and Hades, the lord of the world below, rises up out of it, and carries her away from the circle of her playmates. Without tasting food, her mother, torches in hand, searches for her for nine days, until from Hecate or Helios she learns who has kidnaped the girl. When Zeus denies her request for the restoration of her child, Demeter hides herself in Eleusis, and in anger prevents the growth of all grain. Not until Zeus, in consequence of this action on her part, has at length decided that Core shall remain but a third part of each year in the lower world does the goddess re- turn to Olympus and again give fruitf ulness to the grain. The refusal of a complete restoration is confirmed by the fact that Core has taken from her husband, and eaten, the seed of a pomegranate (a symbol of fructification)/ 97. This legend plainly typifies the development of the seed itself, for in the earliest times in Greece, accord- ing to Hesiod, grain was mostly sown in the spring, so that it was in the ground four months, from about the