CCIV 110 WOMEN IN ANCIENT
GREECE
SPRING 2000
BACKGROUND NOTES
HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER
Suggestions for Study
For each class, I suggest that you first read
the assigned text "cold," using only the notes. Just go
through it and let yourself be confused, if that happens.
(None of the readings is all that long: most of them are
under 20 pages; the few that are longer are easier reading.)
Second, read the supplementary material, if any is
assigned (passages from the "Introduction" and the like).
Third, read the Background Material on this site.
Fourth, reread the assigned text. Now you should
understand it better and you should have answers to some of
the questions that will have arisen in the course of your
initial reading. Fifth, consult the Illustration and
Study Questions site on the Web, and spend some time
thinking about the issues raised there.
As a general rule, for each class hour at Wesleyan, you are
expected to spend three hours of preparation time. Thus, for
each of our classes, which meet for an hour and 20 minutes,
you should plan to spend about four hours in preparation
time. For many classes, you will not need this much time.
When you have time left over, you should spend it thinking
about your paper, beginning a draft, and/or commenting on
other students' papers.
Contents
(Sections):
Homeric Hymn to Demeter
The
Homeric
Hymns
The
Rape of Persephone
Hecate
Helios
Iambe
Eleusis
The
Eleusinian Mysteries
Triptolemus
The
Thesmophoria
Additional
Discussions
The
Adonia
The
Homeric Hymns
The Homeric Hymns range in date from
about the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE. The Homeric and
Hesiodic epics thus form a background to them.
The Theogony is an especially
important background document for the Homeric Hymns, since
the hymns as a whole fill out and specify the honors
accorded to each of the Olympian divinities.
Thus, there are Homeric Hymns to Zeus,
Hera, Hestia/Dionysus, Demeter, Poseidon, Athena, Apollo,
Artemis, Ares, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Hermes
(the
twelve canonical Olympians),
as well as to Gaia, the hero Herakles, the Dioscouri (Sons
of Zeus), and to Helios (see below) and Selene (the moon).
All of the Homeric hymns recount
important chapters in the mythological history of the
Olympians. Several of them (including the Hymn to Demeter)
share structural features with the Theogony. And
several (again including the Hymn to Demeter) fill in an
important aspect of the cosmogony that was left undeveloped
in the Theogony: the relationship between gods and
mortals.
What conclusions do you draw from the
first section of the poem about the relationship between
gods and mortals?
The
Rape of Persephone
The Homeric Hymns range in date from
about the eighth to the sixth centuries BCE. The Homeric and
Hesiodic epics thus form a background to them.
Links to terracotta
plaques on study page
also to terracotta
plaques with them enthroned;
Locri
votive relief at Haifa 480 bce;
on coin
460-450; Codrus
painter last quarter of 5th
century (on couch together); mid 4th century at home
together small
large;
also to Apulian vases with
underworld
also to later painitngs? Bernini
small DG Rosetti P
with pomegranate
Hecate
An important section of the
Theogony is the Hymn to Hecate (lines 411-55).
Consult the Theogony and the background
notes to the Theogony
to familiarize yourself with Hecate's characteristics and
the circumstances of her birth.
What characteristics of Hecate as related
both in the Theogony and in this hymn make her an
appropriate first divinity for Demeter to consult? Note
that, at the end of the poem, Hecate appears again (lines
448-40), and that she gains the permanent characteristic
there of becoming Persephone's "attendant and follower."
Helios
Hecate and Demeter speed off together
to consult Helios. Who is he, and why do they approach him
for information? Consult the background
notes on the Theogony
to see how Helios fits into the evolution of the cosmogony
in Hesiod.
Iambe
Iambe's name is the feminine form of
iambos, the name of the genre to which Semonides' poem on
women belonged. Consult the background
notes on Semonides to remind
yourself of the characteristics of this genre.
Ritual jesting and obscenity were common
in the cults of Demeter and Dionysus, and figure also in the
celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries associated with
Demeter and Persephone (see
below). The mythographer
Apollodorus says that Iambe's
jesting was the reason for
the practice of ritual jesting at the Thesmophoria, a
festival celebrated in honor of Demeter and Persephone
(see
below). (See also note I.5.1,
n. 5 at the bottom of the link to Apollodorus.)
But in other versions of the myth of
Demeter, the goddess is received by a woman named Baubo, who
makes her laugh by exposing herself, in a ritual gesture
called anasyrma ("lifting up [of skirts]"). A set of
statuettes from Priene, a Greek city on the east coast of
Asia Minor, are usually identified as "Baubo"
figurines. In these
figurines, the female body is represented as the face
conflated with the lower part of the abdomen, much like the
phalluses
decorated with eyes, mouth, and sometimes also legs that
appear on vase paintings and also as statuettes.
What feature of the iambos, and what
aspects of ritual obscenity do you think are relevant to the
Iambe episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter? What meaning
do you think these words and actions might have for Demeter,
and why does she respond to them as she does?
Eleusis
Eleusis--the town to which Demeter
first came (line 96)--was a village about ten
miles northwest of Athens.
(Follow this link to a map
of the location on Perseus.)
By the end of the seventh century BCE the town had been
incorporated into the city of Athens.
Eleusis was the site of the worship of Demeter and
Persephone from an early period, but in the sixth century
the temple (Telesterion) of the goddesses just below the
acropolis of the town was rebuilt so that:
(a) the main gate faced the road to Athens (the
Sacred
Way), instead of
facing
the sea, and
(b) the temple was a large square building with ramps on
three sides.
Follow this link to the discussion
of the site on Perseus.
This structure was unlike that of other sanctuaries, which
conventionally had a rectangular shape and housed a cult
statue of the divinity (like the Parthenon
in Athens). Follow this link to see a reconstruction of the
sixth-century
Eleusinian sanctuary.
Follow this link to see an aerial
view of the site from the
southwest on Perseus.
The Eleusinian Telesterion was instead a large square hall
which, by the fifth century, had rock-cut
stands and was the largest
public building of its kind in Greece.
In the center of the hall was a small, closed room (the
anaktoron) where sacred images were kept. (In the
sixth century, this room was along the eastern
wall of the sanctuary.)
The
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries were an
Athenian festival open to all Greeks, both slave and free,
both men and women.
They were celebrated in the autumn, shortly before the fall
plowing, in the month corresponding to our September
15-October 15, and they lasted about a week.
In the first or preliminary phase, the sacred objects were
brought from the anaktoron in Eleusis to Athens.
At the beginning of the Mysteries proper, the initiands
gathered in Athens, purified themselves by bathing in the
sea at the Bay
of Phaleron (about three
miles away) and made sacrifices.
Afterwards, the initiands and sacred officials processed
from Athens to Eleusis along the Sacred Way.
As the procession passed over the river
Cephisus, men disguised as
women stood on the bridge and made obscene jokes against
those who were crossing.
The evening arrival at Eleusis was celebrated by a festival
of all-night dancing by women carrying kernoi,
pottery vessels sacred to Demeter. Follow this link to see
examples of Eleusinian
kernoi.
The all-night festival or
pannychis also included aischrologia ("obscene
language"), and the drinking of the kykeon, a mixture
of water, barley and mint (see line 209).
The details of the initiation rite itself are not possible
to reconstruct, because they were subject to strict rules of
secrecy. The rites were held in the Telesterion, which had a
capacity of several thousand people. And it seems that they
involved the display of sacred objects, the speaking of
sacred words, and perhaps the enactment of a sacred
drama.
Many ancient sources affirm that those who had experienced
initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries had a better life
and were believed to have a better fate after death.
The Niinnion
Tablet from the first half of
the fourth century is the only document that can be securely
associated with the Eleusinian cult. According to the
inscription at its base, it was dedicated to the two
goddesses by a woman named Niinnion.
In all three registers of the tablet (lower, upper, and
pediment), the same woman appears with the same man. The
woman is probably Niinnion herself, and the man someone who
accompanied her to be initiated.
In all three registers, Niinnion bears a kernos on
her head.
The pediment
represents the pannychis or all-night dance.
The upper
register shows the
presentation of the initiates to Persephone (holding the two
torches) and Demeter (seated) at the rituals celebrated in
Athens before the procession to Eleusis.
The lower
register shows the arrival of
the procession at Eleusis, headed by Iacchus (see below),
and its presentation to Demeter (seated).
Triptolemus
In later
versions of the Demeter myth,
Triptolemus received the gift of agriculture from Demeter
and disseminated it to mankind in a winged chariot. He was
also said to be the son of Metaneira and Keleos, and in myth
he gradually replaces Demophon as the nursling of
Demeter.
Triptolemus is often represented as a
youth, and usually in his winged chariot. On this
Attic
red figure Nolan Amphora of
the classical period (440-430 bce), he is shown receiving
grain from Demeter and without his chariot. (Link here for a
detail
of Triptolemus.) On this
Attic
red-figure hydria of the
early classical period (480-440 bce), he is represented in
his chariot, with Demeter on the right and Persephone on the
left. But on this earlier vase, an Attic
black figure amphora of the
archaic period (550-530 bce), he appears as an older,
bearded man.
There are other young men or boy children
associated with Demeter:
Ploutos (see line 489), whose name means
"Wealth," was the son of Demeter in the Theogony
(lines 976-81). He travels all over the earth and brings
riches and wealth to "those into whose hands he falls."
Since the economy of ancient Greece was agriculturally
based, Ploutos represents the material benefits of the gift
of land cultivation. He is thus the guarantor and bringer of
prosperity in the present life for mankind, and his gifts
balance those having to do with the afterlife. Here is
Ploutos represented as a baby in the arms of Eirene
("Peace") in a late
classical (375-360 bce) marble
statue. But on this vase
(side
B of the Nolan Amphora
described above), he appears as a bearded male cradling a
cornucopia in his left arm.
Closely associated with Ploutos was
Iacchus, a minor deity connected with Dionysus, whose statue
was carried at the head of the Eleusinian procession. (Thus,
Iacchus appears in the lower register of the Niinnion
tablet, the section that represents the arrival at Eleusis.)
In later tradition he, like Ploutos, is a son of Demeter,
or, sometimes, of Persephone. And in art, he is generally a
torchbearer (as on the Niinnion tablet) conducting the
initiates.
It is not uncommon for all three
figures--Triptolemus, Iacchus, and Plutus--to be depicted
together in an Eleusinian context. Link here to a
vase
on which they all appear
together with Demeter and
Persephone.
And on this Attic
red figure Bell krater of the
late classical period (360-350 bce) representing the
initiation of Herakles into the Eleusinian Mysteries,
Triptolemus appears in his chariot on the lower right;
Persephone stands in the center, and Demeter is seated at
the lower left. To the left and right of Persephone in the
upper register of the vase are two figures leading in
inititiates who should probably be identified as Iacchus and
Eumolpus. On the other side of this vase (not pictured),
Ploutos is shown reclining together with Dionysus.
The
Thesmophoria
The festival of the Thesmophoria,
unlike the Eleusinian Mysteries, was open only to citizen
women. It was celebrated in the fall at the time of the
planting of the winter wheat, in the month roughly
equivalent to our October 15-November 15.
The festival celebrated Demeter and Persephone, was closed
to men, and lasted for three days:
On the first, the women set out from their homes and
assembled together in an encampment within the city.
On the second day, they sat on the ground, fasted, and
practiced ritual obscenity.
On the third day, the women feasted and celebrated; this day
was called Kalligeneia ("Beautiful Offspring"), and it
focused especially on Demeter's role as the promoter of both
human and agricultural fertility.
Additional
Discussions
For additional discussion, see the
section on "Farming
and Fertility" in "Daughters
of Demeter." You may also want to consult again the
illustration
for the essay, which depicts
Penelope's return to her mother from the Underworld.
Link here to an interesting paper by a student at Tufts
comparing "Dionysiac
Mysteries and Thesmophoria."
The paper was was written in Hypertext, using texts and
images on Perseus, and it contains much interesting futher
information on the Thesmophoria.
And link here to a site on
"Demeter,
the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and
the Thesmophoria," authored
by Sarah Wilkes, who is now a senior Classical Studies
major. Sarah originally put the site together for her final
project in CCIV
243: Women and the Polis in
Spring 1998, and she plans to ampify it with material from
her final paper for last semester's course on
Aristophanes'
Frogs. It's an
excellent site, containing well-presented information on all
the background topics discussed here. Perhaps you'll be
inspired by it either to study the subject further or to try
your own hand at composing a site on a course topic (in this
course or other ones) that interests you.
The
Adonia
The Thesmophoria is sometimes contrasted with the festival
of Adonis, an annual rite that was not, like the
Thesmophoria, part of the Athenian festival calendar. Thus,
it was a private celebration, not sponsored by the city,
although, like the Thesmophoria, it was an exclusively
women's festival.
The Adonia commemorated and mourned the death at a young age
of the god Adonis. As part of the celebration women planted
gardens in shallow bowls which were allowed to sprout and
then quickly wither and die.
The fertility represented by this festival is the opposite
to that which the Thesmophoria sponsor: both the child and
the plants flourish initially but then perish.
Associated with the Adonia also was the use of
perfumes,oils, and jewelry, in contrast to the noxious odors
characteristic of the Thesmophoria, and the practice of
sexual abstinence associated with it.
The celebrants may also have been of opposite female types
if, as may be the case, the Adonia were especially
celebrated by hetaerae. Link here to see a vase on which the
Adonia
are represented.
Last updated February 13, 2000
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