evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, shocked the faith of a non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagination; and it is important to the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating or the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present,—a region essentially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor mensurable by the chronologer.
The tale respecting the visit of Demeter, which was told by the ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,[1] in reference to another temple of Dêmêtêr between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the Megarians in reference to a Dêmêtrion near their city, acquired under the auspices of Athens still further extension. The goddess was reported to have first communicated to Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of communication from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings of agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thesmophoria, celebrated in honor of Dêmêtêr Thesmoplioros at Athens, was altogether different from the Eleusinia, in this material respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded, and women only were allowed to partake in it: the surname Thesmophorus gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions to mankind.[2] This festival, for women apart and alone, was also
- ↑ Phytalus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received Dêmêtêr as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind with the fruit of the fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.)
- ↑ Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophoklês, Triptolemos, Frag 1. Cicero, Legg ii. 14, and the note of Servius ad Virgil. AEn. iv. 58.
ral persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokratês, Panegyr. p. 55. Philochorus the Attic antiquary could not have received the legend of the Eleusinian Hymn, from the different account which he gave respecting the rape of Persephonê (Philoch. Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting Keleos (Fr. 28, ibid.).
