Agriculture and Greek Myth
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Agriculture in Greek Mythology
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Classical mythology and the sacred religious cult, the Eleusinian Mysteries, reveal a lot about the importance of agriculture and the future fecundity of the land to ancient civilisations. As the mother-goddess of the grain and rich harvest, the myths of Demeter are pivotal to a contemporary understanding of the cultural function of agriculture in the ancient world. The use of primary sources, most notably the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, provide crucial insight into agriculture and its cultural context as represented in this etiological tale of classical mythology.
Considering that land provided liquid wealth and/or livelihood to the vast majority of Athenian citizens, it is no coincidence that classical myths of fertility focused largely on the regeneration of the land as dictated by the power of Demeter. A significant domestic economic activity of the polis, agriculture laid the foundations for a successful and prosperous city-state. Professor of Classics and History at David Herlihy University, Kurt Raaflaub, points out two important functions of the land in Periclean Athens. Firstly, that ‘the land served to demarcate “rich” and “poor”, and secondly, that it ‘underlay the ideal of autarkeia, “self-sufficiency”.’ Providing further evidence to the centrality of agriculture in classical Athens, and more specifically to the oikos, Plutarch describes how Pericles “sold all his annual produce all together at once, and then he used it to buy in the agora each item as it was needed, and so provided for the daily livelihood of his household”. The economic and cultural value of agriculture in antiquity is conveyed through classical mythology of Demeter and her founding of the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most famous religious cults in the ancient world.
The myth of Demeter and Persephonê, preserved
Agriculture in Greek Mythology
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Classical mythology and the sacred religious cult, the Eleusinian Mysteries, reveal a lot about the importance of agriculture and the future fecundity of the land to ancient civilisations. As the mother-goddess of the grain and rich harvest, the myths of Demeter are pivotal to a contemporary understanding of the cultural function of agriculture in the ancient world. The use of primary sources, most notably the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, provide crucial insight into agriculture and its cultural context as represented in this etiological tale of classical mythology.
Considering that land provided liquid wealth and/or livelihood to the vast majority of Athenian citizens, it is no coincidence that classical myths of fertility focused largely on the regeneration of the land as dictated by the power of Demeter. A significant domestic economic activity of the polis, agriculture laid the foundations for a successful and prosperous city-state. Professor of Classics and History at David Herlihy University, Kurt Raaflaub, points out two important functions of the land in Periclean Athens. Firstly, that ‘the land served to demarcate “rich” and “poor”, and secondly, that it ‘underlay the ideal of autarkeia, “self-sufficiency”.’ Providing further evidence to the centrality of agriculture in classical Athens, and more specifically to the oikos, Plutarch describes how Pericles “sold all his annual produce all together at once, and then he used it to buy in the agora each item as it was needed, and so provided for the daily livelihood of his household”. The economic and cultural value of agriculture in antiquity is conveyed through classical mythology of Demeter and her founding of the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most famous religious cults in the ancient world.
The myth of Demeter and Persephonê, preserved
Bibliography: * Pausanias, Description of Greece, fl. ca. 150-175BC, trans. W.H.S Jones, W Heinemann, London, 1935. * Plutarch, Life of Pericles, ed. Hubert Ashton Holden, MacMillan & Co., London, 1984. Secondary Sources * Foley, Helene, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1994. * Powell, Barry, Classical Myth, 6th ed., Pearson Longman, New York, 2009, 234. * Parker, Robert, Polytheism and Society at Athens, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005. * Raaflaub, Kurt, “The Athenian Economy”, ed. Loren J. Samons II, The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Pericles, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007. * Rice, D Powell, Barry, “Myths of Fertility”, Classical Myth, 6th ed., Pearson Longman, New York, 2009, 234. Mylonas, George, “Illustrations”, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1961, 386. [ 5 ]. B Powell, Classical Myth, 2009, 251. [ 9 ]. David Rice & John Stambaugh, “The Eleusinian Mysteries”, Sources for the Study of Greek Religion, ed. Burke Long, Scholars Press, 1979, 171. [ 11 ]. Helene Foley, “Variants of the Myth”, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1994, 99-100.