FROM THE EARTH TO THE UNDERWORLD
=114. Myths of Ceres, Pluto, and Proserpine.= The search of Ceres for
Proserpine, and of Orpheus for Eurydice, are stories pertaining both to
Earth and Hades.
=115. The Rape of Proserpine.=[151] When the giants were imprisoned
by Jupiter under Mount Ætna, Pluto (Hades) feared lest the shock of
their fall might expose his kingdom to the light of day. Under this
apprehension, he mounted his chariot drawn by black horses, and made a
circuit of inspection to satisfy himself of the extent of the damage.
While he was thus engaged, Venus, who was sitting on Mount Eryx playing
with her boy Cupid, espied him and said, "My son, take thy darts which
subdue all, even Jove himself, and send one into the breast of yonder
dark monarch, who rules the realm of Tartarus. Dost thou not see that
even in heaven some despise our power? Minerva and Diana defy us; and
there is that daughter of Ceres, goddess of earth, who threatens to
follow their example. Now, if thou regardest thine own interest or
mine, join these two in one." The boy selected his sharpest and truest
arrow, and sped it right to the heart of Pluto.
In the vale of Enna is a lake embowered in woods, where Spring
reigns perpetual. Here Proserpine (Persephone) was playing with her
companions, gathering lilies and violets, and singing, one may imagine,
such words as our poet Shelley puts into her mouth:
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom,
Gods, and men, and beasts, have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the hours,
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.[152]
Pluto saw her, loved her, and carried her off. She screamed for help to
her mother and her companions; but the ravisher urged on his steeds and
outdistanced pursuit. When he reached the river Cyane, it opposed his
passage, whereupon he struck the bank with his trident, and the earth
opened and gave him a passage to Tartarus.
=116. The Wanderings of Ceres.=[153] Ceres (Demeter) sought her
daughter all the world over. Bright-haired Aurora, when she came
forth in the morning, and Hesperus, when he led out the stars in the
evening, found her still busy in the search. At length, weary and
sad, she sat down upon a stone, and remained nine days and nights in
the open air, under the sunlight and moonlight and falling showers.
It was where now stands the city of Eleusis, near the home of an old
man named Celeus. His little girl, pitying the old woman, said to
her, "Mother,"--and the name was sweet to the ears of Ceres,--"why
sittest thou here alone upon the rocks?" The old man begged her to
come into his cottage. She declined. He urged her. "Go in peace," she
replied, "and be happy in thy daughter; I have lost mine." But their
compassion finally prevailed. Ceres rose from the stone and went with
them. As they walked, Celeus said that his only son lay sick of a
fever. The goddess stooped and gathered some poppies. Then, entering
the cottage, where all was in distress,--for the boy Triptolemus
seemed past recovery,--she restored the child to life and health with
a kiss. In grateful happiness the family spread the table and put upon
it curds and cream, apples, and honey in the comb. While they ate,
Ceres mingled poppy juice in the milk of the boy. When night came, she
arose and, taking the sleeping boy, molded his limbs with her hands,
and uttered over him three times a solemn charm, then went and laid
him in the ashes. His mother, who had been watching what her guest
was doing, sprang forward with a cry and snatched the child from the
fire. Then Ceres assumed her own form, and a divine splendor shone
all around. While they were overcome with astonishment, she said,
"Mother, thou hast been cruel in thy fondness; for I would have made
thy son immortal. Nevertheless, he shall be great and useful. He shall
teach men the use of the plow and the rewards which labor can win from
the soil." So saying, she wrapped a cloud about her and mounting her
chariot rode away.
[Illustration: FIG. 89. HADES AND PERSEPHONE]
Ceres continued her search for her daughter till at length she returned
to Sicily, whence she first had set out, and stood by the banks of the
river Cyane. The river nymph would have told the goddess all she had
witnessed, but dared not, for fear of Pluto; so she ventured merely
to take up the girdle which Proserpine had dropped in her flight, and
float it to the feet of the mother. Ceres, seeing this, laid her curse
on the innocent earth in which her daughter had disappeared. Then
succeeded drought and famine, flood and plague, until, at last, the
fountain Arethusa made intercession for the land. For she had seen that
it opened only unwillingly to the might of Pluto; and she had also, in
her flight from Alpheüs through the lower regions of the earth, beheld
the missing Proserpine. She said that the daughter of Ceres seemed sad,
but no longer showed alarm in her countenance. Her look was such as
became a queen,--the queen of Erebus; the powerful bride of the monarch
of the realms of the dead.
[Illustration: FIG. 90. SACRIFICE TO DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE]
When Ceres heard this, she stood awhile like one stupefied; then she
implored Jupiter to interfere to procure the restitution of her
daughter. Jupiter consented on condition that Proserpine should not
during her stay in the lower world have taken any food; otherwise, the
Fates forbade her release. Accordingly, Mercury was sent, accompanied
by Spring, to demand Proserpine of Pluto. The wily monarch consented;
but alas! the maiden had taken a pomegranate which Pluto offered her,
and had sucked the sweet pulp from a few of the seeds. A compromise,
however, was effected by which she was to pass half the time with her
mother, and the rest with the lord of Hades.
Of modern poems upon the story of the maiden seized in the vale of
Enna, none conveys a lesson more serene of the beauty of that dark
lover of all fair life, Death, than the Proserpine of Woodberry, from
which we quote the three following stanzas. "I pick," says the poet
wandering through the vale of Enna,
I pick the flowers that Proserpine let fall,
Sung through the world by every honeyed muse:
Wild morning-glories, daisies waving tall,
At every step is something new to choose;
And oft I stop and gaze
Upon the flowery maze;
By yonder cypresses on that soft rise,
Scarce seen through poppies and the knee-deep wheat,
Juts the dark cleft where on her came the fleet
Thunder-black horses and the cloud's surprise
And he who filled the place.
Did marigolds bright as these, gilding the mist,
Drop from her maiden zone? Wert thou last kissed,
Pale hyacinth, last seen, before his face?
* * * * *
Oh, whence has silence stolen on all things here,
Where every sight makes music to the eye?
Through all one unison is singing clear;
All sounds, all colors in one rapture die.
Breathe slow, O heart, breathe slow!
A presence from below
Moves toward the breathing world from that dark deep,
Whereof men fabling tell what no man knows,
By little fires amid the winter snows,
When earth lies stark in her titanic sleep
And doth with cold expire;
He brings thee all, O Maiden flower of earth,
Her child in whom all nature comes to birth,
Thee, the fruition of all dark desire.
* * * * *
O Proserpine, dream not that thou art gone
Far from our loves, half-human, half-divine;
Thou hast a holier adoration won
In many a heart that worships at no shrine.
Where light and warmth behold me,
And flower and wheat infold me,
I lift a dearer prayer than all prayers past:
He who so loved thee that the live earth clove
Before his pathway unto light and love,
And took thy flower-full bosom,--who at last
Shall every blossom cull,--
Lover the most of what is most our own,
The mightiest lover that the world has known,
Dark lover, Death,--was he not beautiful?[154]
[Illustration: FIG. 91. TRIPTOLEMUS AND THE ELEUSINIAN DEITIES]
=117. Triptolemus and the Eleusinian Mysteries.= Ceres, pacified with
this arrangement, restored the earth to her favor. Now she remembered,
also, Celeus and his family, and her promise to his infant son
Triptolemus. She taught the boy the use of the plow and how to sow the
seed. She took him in her chariot, drawn by winged dragons, through
all the countries of the earth; and under her guidance he imparted to
mankind valuable grains and the knowledge of agriculture. After his
return Triptolemus built a temple to Ceres in Eleusis and established
the worship of the goddess under the name of the Eleusinian mysteries,
which in the splendor and solemnity of their observance surpassed all
other religious celebrations among the Greeks.
[Illustration: FIG. 92. DEMETER, TRIPTOLEMUS, AND PROSERPINA]
=118. Orpheus and= =Eurydice.=[155] Of mortals who have visited Hades
and returned, none has a sweeter or sadder history than Orpheus, son of
Apollo and the Muse Calliope. Presented by his father with a lyre and
taught to play upon it, he became the most famous of musicians, and not
only his fellow mortals but even the wild beasts were softened by his
strains. The very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. And so
also was Eurydice,--whom he loved and won.
[Illustration: FIG. 93. ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
From the painting by Lord Leighton]
Hymen was called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus
with Eurydice, but he conveyed no happy omens with him. His torch
smoked and brought tears into the eyes. In keeping with such sad
prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, was seen by the
shepherd Aristæus, who was struck with her beauty and made advances
to her. As she fled she trod upon a snake in the grass, and was bitten
in the foot. She died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the
upper air, both gods and men, and finding his complaint of no avail,
resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead. He descended by
a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Tænarus, and arrived
in the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented
himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine. Accompanying his
words with the lyre, he sang his petition for his wife. Without her
he would not return. In such tender strains he sang that the very
ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a
moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture
ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaüs rested
from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his
rock to listen.[156] Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks
of the Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine could not resist and
Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice was called. She came from among
the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was
permitted to take her away with him on condition that he should not
turn round to look at her till they should have reached the upper air.
Under this condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she
following. Mindful of his promise, without let or hindrance the bard
passed through the horrors of hell. All Hades held its breath.
[Illustration: FIG. 94. FAREWELL OF ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE]
... On he slept,
And Cerberus held agape his triple jaws;
On stept the bard. Ixion's wheel stood still.
Now, past all peril, free was his return,
And now was hastening into upper air
Eurydice, when sudden madness seized
The incautious lover; pardonable fault,
If they below could pardon: on the verge
Of light he stood, and on Eurydice
(Mindless of fate, alas! and soul-subdued)
Lookt back.
There, Orpheus! Orpheus! there was all
Thy labor shed, there burst the Dynast's bond,
And thrice arose that rumor from the lake.
"Ah, what!" she cried, "what madness hath undone
Me! and, ah, wretched! thee, my Orpheus, too!
For lo! the cruel Fates recall me now;
Chill slumbers press my swimming eyes.... Farewell!
Night rolls intense around me as I spread
My helpless arms ... thine, thine no more ... to thee."
She spake, and, like a vapor, into air
Flew, nor beheld him as he claspt the void
And sought to speak; in vain; the ferry-guard
Now would not row him o'er the lake again,
His wife twice lost, what could he? whither go?
What chant, what wailing, move the Powers of Hell?
Cold in the Stygian bark and lone was she.
Beneath a rock o'er Strymon's flood on high,
Seven months, seven long-continued months, 'tis said,
He breath'd his sorrows in a desert cave,
And sooth'd the tiger, moved the oak, with song.[157]
The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed
their advances. Finally, excited by the rites of Bacchus, one of them
exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and threw at him her javelin. The
weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless
at his feet; so also the stones that they threw at him. But the women,
raising a scream, drowned the voice of the music, and overwhelmed him
with their missiles. Like maniacs they tore him limb from limb; then
cast his head and lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated,
murmuring sad music to which the shores responded. The Muses buried the
fragments of his body at Libethra, where the nightingale is said to
sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of Greece. His
lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars; but the shade of the bard
passed a second time to Tartarus and rejoined Eurydice.
Other mortals who visited the Stygian realm and returned were Hercules,
Theseus, Ulysses, and Æneas.[158]
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Ovid, Metam. 5, 341-347.
[152] Song of Proserpine, while gathering flowers on the plain of Enna.
[153] Ovid, Metam. 5. 440, 642; Apollodorus, 1, 5, § 2; Hyginus, Fab.
147.
[154] From Proserpine, stanzas written by Lake Pergusa; by George E.
Woodberry (_Century_ _Magazine_, July, 1909).
[155] Ovid, Metam. 10, 1-77.
[156] See Commentary
[157] From W. S. Landor's Orpheus and Eurydice in Dry Sticks.
[158] See Index.