The mythology of Greece and Rome, with special reference to its use in art

by Otto Seemann

In the representations of the goddess an expression of lofty dignity is blended with condescending benevolence and gentleness. Her principal attributes are a torch, a sheaf of corn, a garland of ears of corn interwoven in her hair, and a basket filled with flowers at her side. Among the few antique statues, a large marble figure in the Capitoline Museum at Rome deserves especial mention. The engraving (Fig. 44), which is after a Pompeian painting, depicts Demeter as the bountiful goddess of agriculture. She is seated on a throne, and holds a torch consisting of two calices in her right hand, and a bunch of corn in her left.

15. Persephone (Proserpina).—In Persephone, the goddess of the lower world, whom the Athenians preferred to call by her mystic name of Cora, two distinct conceptions are embodied. On the one hand she appears as the wife of the dark god of the lower world—like him, a gloomy, awe-inspiring deity, who pitilessly drags down all that lives into the hidden depths of the earth; whence the grave is called the chamber of Persephone. Such is the view of her taken by Homer and later epic poets. These represent her as sitting enthroned at the side of her grim lord, the joyless queen of the infernal regions, to dwell in which were worse than to be a slave on earth. On the other hand she appears as Cora, the lovely daughter of the all-bountiful Mother Earth; a personification, in fact, of that never-dying force of nature which, year by year, causes the most luxuriant vegetation to spring up before our eyes, only, however, to die away again in the autumn. In a somewhat narrower sense Persephone may be regarded as a type of the grain, which long remains in the ground where it has been sown as though dead, but afterwards breaks forth into new life. It was only natural to associate with this last conception ideas of the immortality of the soul, of which, in the secret doctrines of the mysteries, Persephone was a symbol. Though we know but little concerning the details of the mysteries, we are yet aware that their chief object was to disseminate better and purer ideas of a future life than the popular faith of the Greeks afforded. It was commonly believed that the souls of men after death led a dull, miserable existence in the world of shadows. Those initiated in the mysteries, however, were taught that death was only a resurrection of the soul to a brighter and better life, on the condition, of course, that a man had fully pleased the gods and rendered himself worthy of such a happy lot.

Persephone, or Proserpina, as she is called in Latin, was a deity originally entirely strange to the Romans, who borrowed all their ideas of the lower world from the Greeks. Nevertheless, they identified her with Libera, an ancient rustic goddess of fertility, the feminine counterpart of Liber, under which name she signifies the same as the Greek Cora. Black, barren cows were sacrificed to Persephone as an infernal goddess, but she does not appear to have had any temples of her own.

Fig. 45.—Persephone Enthroned. Painting from Pompeii. Naples.

Persephone is of no great importance in art, and statues of her are rare. She is represented either as the fair daughter of Demeter, or as the grave, severe queen of the world of shadows. In the latter character she may generally be recognised by her sceptre and diadem. Her other attributes are ears of corn, a poppy, and a torch, as a symbol of her connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, besides the pomegranate and narcissus. The engraving (Fig. 45), after a painting in the Naples Museum, represents her as the Stygian queen.

16. Hades (Pluto).—The same twofold nature which we meet with in Persephone may be observed also in her husband, Hades, or Aïdoneus (the invisible), as he is called by the epic poets, on account of the mysterious gloom in which his kingdom as well as his person was enveloped. He first appears as the unrelenting, inexorable foe of human life, on whom one cannot even think without fear and trembling. For this reason, says Homer, “he is of all the gods the most detested among mortals.” This conception, however, was subsequently supplanted by one of a less dismal nature, in which the other side of his character is brought into prominence. From this point of view he is represented not only as sending nourishment to plants from the deep bosom of the earth, but also as offering unbounded riches to mankind in the shape of the precious metals which lie in his subterraneous passages and chambers. In this sense he was also called Pluto, or Pluteus—that is, the god of riches.

Hades belonged to the earliest deities of Greece, being, like Poseidon, a brother of Zeus. When the three brothers partitioned the universe among themselves, Hades received the dark regions of the earth as his exclusive kingdom, the portals of which he was said to keep closed, in order that no soul might return to the upper world without his consent. He was also termed Polydectes (the receiver of many), from the fact of his seizing on all men, without distinction, at their appointed time, and conveying them to his dismal realms. The ideas which men first entertained, as to the mode in which Hades exercised his power over mortals, exactly corresponded with their grim conception of the god. He was looked on as a powerful and dreaded robber, who, as in the case of Persephone, seizes on his prey and carries it off with his swift horses. Later, a milder conception of the god was introduced. The task of carrying the souls of the dead to the lower world was delegated to Hermes, who thus became a servant of Pluto, the Zeus of the infernal regions, just as he was otherwise a servant of the Zeus of heaven. But though the original dismal conception of this deity as the inexorable god of death was much diminished in course of time, yet Hades, nevertheless, always conveyed an idea of something grim and mysterious to the Greek mind; which is perhaps the reason why so few myths, beyond that of the rape of Proserpina, were circulated concerning him. He can, in fact, scarcely be said to have had a place in the public worship of the Greeks.

Fig. 46.—Head of Hades. Palazzo Chigi. Rome.