The Demeter of the Thesmophoria was she who introduced and patronised the θεσμός of marriage.
- ὁι μὲν ἔπειτα
- Ἀσπάσιοι λέκτροιο παλαιοῦ θεσμὸν ἵκοντο,
as Homer says of Odysseus and Penelope.[1] What was done at the Thesmophoria Herodotus did not think fit to tell. A scholiast on Lucian's Dialogues of Courtesans let out the secret in a much later age. He repeats the story of the swineherd Eubuleus, whose pigs were swallowed up by the earth when it opened to receive Hades and Persephone. In honour and in memory of Eubuleus, pigs were thrown into the cavern (χάσματα) of Demeter. Then certain women brought up the decaying flesh of the dead pigs, and placed it on the altar. It was believed that to mix this flesh with the seed-corn secured abundance of harvest. Though the rite is magical in character, perhaps the decaying flesh might act as manure, and be of real service to the farmer. Afterwards images of pigs, such as Mr. Newton found in a hole in the holy plot of Demeter at Cnidos, were restored to the place whence the flesh had been taken. The practice was believed to make marriage fruitful; its virtues were for the husband as well as for the husbandman.[2]
However the Athenians got the rite, whether they evolved it or adapted it from some "Pelasgian" or other prehistoric people, similar practices occur among the Khonds in India and the Pawnees in America. The Khonds sacrifice a pig and a human victim, the
- ↑ Odyssey, xxiii. 295.
- ↑ Newton, Halicarnassus, plate lv., pp. 331, 371–391.
