At least this appears to be fairly
certain for the daughter Persephone. The goddess who spends three
or, according to another version of the myth, six months of every
year with the dead under ground and the remainder of the year with
the living above ground; in whose absence the barley seed is hidden
in the earth and the fields lie bare and fallow; on whose return in
spring to the upper world the corn shoots up from the clods and the
earth is heavy with leaves and blossoms--this goddess can surely be
nothing else than a mythical embodiment of the vegetation, and
particularly of the corn, which is buried under the soil for some
months of every winter and comes to life again, as from the grave,
in the sprouting cornstalks and the opening flowers and foliage of
every spring. No other reasonable and probable explanation of
Persephone seems possible. And if the daughter goddess was a
personification of the young corn of the present year, may not the
mother goddess be a personification of the old corn of last year,
which has given birth to the new crops? The only alternative to this
view of Demeter would seem to be to suppose that she is a
personification of the earth, from whose broad bosom the corn and
all other plants spring up, and of which accordingly they may
appropriately enough be regarded as the daughters.
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