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The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Bruce Lincoln
Bruce Lincoln
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455
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Extract

Within the last fifteen years, scholars have shown considerable interest in the ritual life of women in antiquity, and have been particularly successful in recognizing the traces of women's initiatory rituals in various Greek and Roman ceremonies and myths. With regard to the Greek materials, the Arrephoria and Brauronia festivals have been treated in this light, as have two ceremonies in which details of the Demeter-Persephone mythos were reenacted: the Thesmophoria and the Haloa.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 72 , Issue 3-4 , October 1979 , pp. 223 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

1 For the Roman materials, see especially Gagé, J., Matronalia (Brussels: Collection Latomus, 1963)Google Scholar; for the Greek, Brelich, Angelo, Paides e Parthenoi (Rome: Ateneo, 1969) vol. 1.Google Scholar

2 Burkert, Walter, “Kekropidensage und Arrephoria: Vom Initiationsritus zum Panathenäenfest,” Hermes 94 (1966) 1–25.Google Scholar

3 Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi, 240–79 et passim. A brief English summary of his views is available in his essay “Symbol of a Symbol,” in Kitagawa, J. M. and Long, C. H., eds., Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969) 201–6.Google Scholar

4 Johansen, J. Prytz, “The Thesmophoria as a Women's Festival,” Temenos 11 (1975) 78–87.Google Scholar

5 Skov, G. E., “The Priestess of Demeter and Kore and her Role in the Initiation of Women at the Festival of the Haloa at Eleusis,” Temenos 11 (1975) 136–47.Google Scholar

6 See the classical sources listed in Richardson, N. J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974) 284Google Scholar, and such secondary sources as Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1903) 271–76Google Scholar; von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Ulrich, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1932) 2. 51f.Google Scholar

7 Cornford, F. M., “The Aparkhai and the Eleusinain Mysteries,” in Essays Presented to William Ridgeway (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1913) 153–66Google Scholar; Nilsson, M. P., ”Die eleusinischen Gottheiten,” ARW 12 (1935) 101–19.Google Scholar

8 Jeanmaire, H., Couroi et Courètes (Lille: Bibliothèque Universitaire, 1939) 269–79, 298–305.Google Scholar

9 His etymology and interpretation are now accepted by such standard reference works as Frisk, Hjalmar, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Winter, 1973) 1Google Scholar. 920f.; and Pokorny, Julius, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern: Francke, 1959) 577.Google Scholar

10 As in Pausanias 3.16.1, noted by Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi, 162, n. 145. Note also Sophocles, frg. 736, in Nauck, Augustus, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, revised by Snell, Bruno (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964) 304, and the lines of Karkinos preserved in Diodorus Siculus 5.5.1, where Kore is called parthenos.Google Scholar

11 Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, 1.131; Ovid, Fasti, 4.417. In the Metamorphoses, 5.376f., Ovid states it was fear that Proserpine might remain virgin that prompted Pluto to take her.

12 Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, 1.133–37; Nonnus, Dionysiaka, 6.1–3; Firmicus Maternus, 7.1.

13 Gernet, L. and Boulanger, A., Le genie grec dans la religion (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1932) 39f.Google Scholar, cited by Scarpi, Paulo, Letture sulla Religione Classica: L'Inno Omerico a Demeter (Florence: Olschke, 1976) 109f.Google Scholar

14 All translations are original. The text used for the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the Richardson edition, cited above, with its copious annotation.

15 Text in Hall, J. B., Claudian: De Raptu Proserpinae (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1969).Google Scholar

16 See Richardson, Homeric Hymn, 164ff.

17 Thus, for instance, Bianchi, Ugo, “Sagezza olimpica e mistica eleusina nell'inno omerico a Demetra,” Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 35 (1964) 166–68, 176–80.Google Scholar

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19 Most recently, Scarpi, L'Inno Omerico, 109–38.

20 Erdmann, Walter, Die Ehe im alten Griechenland (Munich: Beck, 1934) 179f.Google Scholar The passage from Vernant, Jean, “Le mariage en Grèce archaïque,” La Parola del Passato 148 (1973) 66f.Google Scholar, which Scarpi cites in support of his views (p. 125 and note) is not really adequate to the task, because, among other things, it does not address the impossibility of a marriage to one's patrōs.

21 As argued by Nilsson, “Die eleusinischen Gottheiten,” 105–7, and Otto, Walter, “The Meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries,” in Campbell, J., Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Vol. 2: The Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University, 1955) 17f.Google Scholar

22 Eliade, Mircea, Rites and Symbols of Initiation (New York: Harper & Row, 1958) 13f., 61–64Google Scholar, 132, et passim; Knight, W. F. Jackson, Cumaean Gates (Oxford: Blackwell, 1936) 3–7, et passim.Google Scholar

23 On this and other aspects of the so-called liminal state, see Turner, Victor, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” in The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1967) 93–102.Google Scholar

24 See, e.g., the stories of Helen and Theseus, Boreas and Oreithya, the Dioskuroi and the daughters of Leukippos, the rape of the Athenian women by the Pelasgians at the Brauronia festival, and that of the Spartan virgins at the Hyakinthia, all of which have been treated as evidence of archaic Greek rites of female initiation by Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi, 138, 146, 162n., 163n., 165, 241, 246, 277f., and 283f., along with other examples.

25 La Fontaine, J. S., “Ritualization of Women's Life-crises in Bugisu,” in The Interpretation of Ritual: Essays in Honour of A. I. Richards (London: Tavistock, 1972) 167f.Google Scholar

26 Guthrie, W. K. C., the Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon, 1950) 284.Google Scholar

27 Nilsson, M. P., Greek Folk Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1961) 53.Google Scholar

28 First suggested, to my knowledge, by Puntoni, V., L'inno omerico a Demetra (Livorni: R. Giusti, 1896) 5Google Scholar, 8, et passim; more recently by Kraus, T., Hekate (Heidelberg: Winter, 1960) 63f.Google Scholar; and Böhme, Robert, Orpheus: Der Sanger und seine Zeit (Bern: Francke, 1970) 108Google Scholar. For the details of the argument over these lines, see Richardson, Homeric Hymn, 80ff., 155ff., and 293ff.

29 Karkinos as cited in Diodorus Siculus, 5.5.1; Euripides, Helen, line 1307; idem, frg. 63, in Nauck, 2d ed., 378.

30 Kerenyi, Contra C., Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Princeton: Princeton University, 1967) 26.Google Scholar

31 Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 28, 31, 68, 74f., et passim.

32 On Baubo and lambe, see Richardson, Homeric Hymn, 213ff., and the literature cited therein.

33 Text in Butterworth, G. W., Clement of Alexandria (New York: Putnam, 1919). Hypo kolpois is most probably a euphemism for “into the vagina,” and the action thus described seems to be a ritual mimicry of sexual intercourse.Google Scholar

34 Eliade, , Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 45f.; idem, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) 212ff.Google Scholar

35 Jeanmaire, 298ff., 304f.; Eliade, Mircea, Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses (Paris: Payot, 1976) 1.304f.Google Scholar

36 See Richardson, Homeric Hymn, 195f. and 259f.

37 This theme has been rightly emphasized by Scarpi, L'Inno Omerico, 52–72, 89–95. See also the extremely interesting work of Chirassi, Ileana, Elementi di Culture Precereali nei Miti e Rili Greci (Rome: Ateneo, 1968) 75f.Google Scholar, 88f., 190f.; and Piccaluga, G., “Ta Pherephattēs Anthologia,” Maia 18 (1966) 232–53.Google Scholar

38 This is the version of the Homeric Hymn. Other sources have her eat more than one seed, and still others divide her year in half rather than into thirds.

39 Kerenyi, Eleusis, 137ff.

40 See Chirassi, 73–90, and Pestalozza, Uberto, L'éternel feminin dans la religion mediteranéene, (Brussels: Collection Latomus, 1965) 53, inter alia.Google Scholar

41 Carnoy, A., Dictionaire étymologique des noms grecs des plantes (Louvain: Publications Universitaire, 1959) 87f., cited by Scarpi, 98n.Google Scholar

42 van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage (trans. Vizedom, M. B. and Caffee, G. L.: University of Chicago, 1960) 10f., 21, et passim.Google Scholar

43 Bianchi, “Sagezza olimpica,” 168f.; Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi, 283f. and note 111; Eliade, Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, 1. 304f.

44 Provisionally titled Emerging from the Chrysalis: Studies in Rituals of Women's Initiation (Cambridge: Harvard University, to appear in 1981).Google Scholar

45 See my two preliminary studies, “The Religious Significance of Women's Scarification among the Tiv,” Africa 45 (1973) 316–26Google Scholar; and “Women's Initiation among the Navaho: Myth, Rite, and Meaning,” Paideuma 23 (1977) 255–63.Google Scholar

46 On the probability that the appearance of Persephone constituted the final revelation at Eleusis, see Otto, “Meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries,” 83f.; Eliade, Histoire des Croyances el des idées religieuses, 1. 312.