Many of the epithets bestowed by the ancients
on Demeter mark her intimate association with the corn in the
clearest manner.
How deeply implanted in the mind of the ancient Greeks was this
faith in Demeter as goddess of the corn may be judged by the
circumstance that the faith actually persisted among their Christian
descendants at her old sanctuary of Eleusis down to the beginning of
the nineteenth century. For when the English traveller Dodwell
revisited Eleusis, the inhabitants lamented to him the loss of a
colossal image of Demeter, which was carried off by Clarke in 1802
and presented to the University of Cambridge, where it still
remains. "In my first journey to Greece," says Dodwell, "this
protecting deity was in its full glory, situated in the centre of a
threshing-floor, amongst the ruins of her temple. The villagers were
impressed with a persuasion that their rich harvests were the effect
of her bounty, and since her removal, their abundance, as they
assured me, has disappeared." Thus we see the Corn Goddess Demeter
standing on the threshing-floor of Eleusis and dispensing corn to
her worshippers in the nineteenth century of the Christian era,
precisely as her image stood and dispensed corn to her worshippers
on the threshing-floor of Cos in the days of Theocritus.
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