Wandering Demeter, Persephone descending : manipulations of physical and figurative geography in the Demeter-Persephone myth

Romano, Carman

Wandering Demeter, Persephone descending : manipulations of physical and figurative geography in the Demeter-Persephone myth

Date

2016

Authors

Romano, Carman

Type

Thesis

Abstract

Ancient Greek myth conceives the gods as mobile beings, visiting Olympus, the mortal realm, and sometimes even Hades. A god’s movements in myth are always significant, since these help a myth to articulate its conception of that deity. The movements of two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, throughout the geographies of the myth of Persephone’s abduction and Demeter’s subsequent wanderings, can reveal the extent of the goddesses’ power; their relationships to spaces infernal, mortal, and divine; and the importance of their geographical movements to the social transitions of ritual actors. Demeter and Persephone’s movements through geographical space in fact have significance on both a physical and a figurative level. Physically speaking, Demeter’s movements indicate her power on earth, while Persephone’s, her power in Hades. On a figurative level, Demeter’s movements provide a model for good and bad social relations, both between human beings and between mortals and the gods, while Persephone’s models the social transitions of marriage and death. In this study, I analyze the significance of the goddesses’ movements through geography not only in the Homeric Hymn, but in Callimachus’ Hymn 6 to Demeter, Pausanias’ Descriptions of Greece, and Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historia.