Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth

by Natalie Haynes

His mind has remained the same, even as his whole body has changed.

Tragic.

Actaeon’s mind might have remained intact, but there is more than a hint here, as his mind darts from one possibility to the next, of the way a deer panics.

He wants to cry out, ‘I am Actaeon – recognize your master!’ But the words go missing from his mind, and the air fills with barking.

As we saw when poor Io was turned into a cow, there is no quicker way to be robbed of power than to lose your capacity to speak. And nowhere is this more true than of Actaeon, desperately trying to communicate with his own dogs but unable to say a word.

Actaeon dies in this form: falsi . . . cervi, a false stag.

The meander pattern (also called the Greek key: a repeating geometric pattern of right-angled loops) is used to represent the ground on which Actaeon has fallen.

And – like the great white shark in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – she has a doll’s eyes: empty of expression, fixed on death.

It begins with a brief precis: Demeter of the lovely hair has her slender-ankled daughter snatched by Aidoneus (a poetic variation of Hades), and Zeus gave her to him.

Gaia – the earth goddess – causes a huge blossoming of narcissus flowers to act as bait for Persephone. She is still unnamed, but here called kalukopidi – the girl with a face as beautiful as a flower.

First that Demeter is not Mother Earth, a role we can more accurately ascribe to Gaia. Rather, Demeter is the goddess of grain, of agriculture. In other words, she specializes in the plants which feed hungry mortals.

There is no indication that she is even slightly self-aware about her beauty: her behaviour is that of a guileless child.

But as she draws closer, the earth splits open and the many-named son of Kronos (that’s Hades again, at the risk of contradicting his epithet) drives his immortal horses at her.

There is no suggestion that Persephone is anything but terrified and appalled by her uncle suddenly appearing from beneath the ground to take her away. The hopelessness of Persephone’s position is only emphasized by the use of ‘son of Kronos’ to describe first her uncle, Hades, and then her father, Zeus.

From Persephone’s perspective, these two deities are – as the Greek text makes plain – essentially the same.

And this poignant absence reflects her new, unwanted existence: Persephone is now little more than a ghost, haunting the realm of the dead.

The kidnapping of Persephone – or Proserpina, to give her her Roman name – was not a subject tackled just by ancient artists, but was a wildly popular theme in Renaissance art too.

But I can’t even begin to think how a sculpture like this is created – where Bernini must have started, how he proceeded to capture these bodies in motion. I almost find it easier to believe he used real people and somehow turned them to stone.

But Zeus is busy in a distant temple receiving offerings (far be it from me to use the word alibi at this point) and so Hades is able to abduct Persephone.

And it is this cry that Demeter hears. A sharp pain seizes her heart. She begins an extensive search for her missing daughter, over land and sea. But no one – not mortals, not gods – wants to tell her the truth. Deo (an alternative name for Demeter) travels all over the earth for nine days, carrying flaming torches in each hand.

Demeter doesn’t eat ambrosia, drink nectar, or wash.9 It’s interesting that her behaviour here is very much like ritual mourning practices we still see today, when the bereaved pause the simple habits of daily life in order to mark a terrible loss.

This part of Demeter’s ordeal always seems to me the most desperate. Not knowing the fate of a loved one is a catastrophic double loss, where imagination forces those left behind to grieve again and again.

We all know that killing a child is just such a horror. And no one sheds a tear for the dead man, especially once his vicious past is revealed.

No one else is responsible, he says, but Zeus the cloud-gatherer. He’s the one who gave her to his brother Hades, to be his wife.10 And Hades has taken her to his dark kingdom, even though she was crying so loudly. But you must stop being angry – it doesn’t do you any good.

Her grief is now more terrible, more savage. She leaves Olympus, abandoning the divine existence she has previously known.

But Demeter – the bringer of seasons, giver of shining gifts – won’t sit on the ornate couch she is offered. The Eleusinians can’t know it, of course, but this goddess is in mourning, and a beautiful, comfortable seat isn’t appropriate for her. Demeter says nothing, but keeps her gaze averted.

Firstly, it reflects what I have always believed to be true (and important) about jokes: we don’t need them when our lives are going well.

We have those times with friends when we’re laughing so hard about something so nonsensical that we begin to wonder if we’ll ever be able to stop.

But we don’t need them then; we just enjoy them. The jokes which reach us when we’re in the bottom of a dark pit, the ones that make us give a reluctant half smile at the absurdity of it all, even as we’re struggling ...

Iambe is one of those extraordinary people who doesn’t shy away from the crippling weight of grief in another person, and a stranger at that.

She rejects the wine as it is offered, however: it must be mixed with water, grain, and herbs before it is acceptable to her.

Most aspects of mystery religions were kept secret by their worshippers; to reveal any details – in speech or in writing – would have been deeply blasphemous. So we will have to imagine what Demeter-worshippers got up to in their secret gatherings. Suffice it to say, their wine sounds vile.

She invites Demeter to raise her son, who is late-born and much longed-for.

The baby’s parents are delighted by how quickly their son grows, and how handsome he is. They have no idea that Demeter isn’t feeding him food and milk, but ambrosia. She is raising him not as a mortal man, but as a god.

Is that ethical?

Demeter hides the boy at night, placing him in the fire like a log. We have other examples of goddesses burning the mortal weakness from a demigod or, like this boy, a heavily favoured mortal.

Cps!

Demeter is so angered by this lack of faith that she pulls the boy from the flames and drops him on the ground. (I hope it doesn’t need saying that you should try literally none of Demeter’s childcare tips at home.)

Only now does she introduce herself and explain that they have been lucky enough to have Demeter herself as their son’s nurse.

Not one to be concerned by trivial things like conspiring to kidnap his own daughter for a forced marriage, Zeus discovers he cannot tolerate something as dreadful as the loss of prestige and gifts he will experience if all humankind is exterminated by famine.

he sends Iris – the goddess of the rainbow – to plead with Demeter and ask her to return home. Iris tries her multicoloured best, but Demeter is unmoved.

This is one of very few occasions when anyone holds their ground against Zeus – and certainly against all the Olympian gods – and wins.

Hermes does as instructed and scoots down to Hades. His role as psychopomp – a figure who escorts the living to the world of the dead – means that this journey is a great deal easier for him than it is for most.

He guides her around this clammy, claustrophobic vision of the Underworld, where ‘The pale things twisting / Overhead are mostly roots.’ He tells her she will be his queen and – by extension – queen of all men.

Persephone is a goddess, of course, so he can’t mean it literally; she doesn’t need breath to live. But he has apparently noticed that she needs to breathe in a less literal sense and that she struggles to do so when he is present. So he has had this room prepared for her with a loom – weaving is always the most suitable womanly pursuit in Greek myth – and thread.

He has found three shadows to be her maids, because they won’t be able to gossip about her – or talk to her, or hear her, as he doesn’t need to mention.