There,
robed in black, she tarried so long that the fruits of the earth
were perishing, and mankind would have died of famine if Pan had not
soothed the angry goddess and persuaded her to quit the cave. In
memory of this event, the Phigalians set up an image of the Black
Demeter in the cave; it represented a woman dressed in a long robe,
with the head and mane of a horse. The Black Demeter, in whose
absence the fruits of the earth perish, is plainly a mythical
expression for the bare wintry earth stripped of its summer mantle
of green.
3. Attis, Adonis, and the Pig
PASSING now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem
to show that these deities of vegetation had also, like other
deities of the same class, their animal embodiments. The worshippers
of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine. This appears to
indicate that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And
the legend that Attis was killed by a boar points in the same
direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig
Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is
said to have injured a god was originally the god himself.
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