Gambreum should perhaps be added (Athenaeus i. 29 f). He accompanied Xerxes on his expedition to Greece, but the stories told of the warning and advice which on several occasions he addressed to the king are scarcely historical.
See Herodotus v. 75, vi. 50-70, vii.; later writers either reproduce or embellish his narrative (Pausanias iii. 4, 3–5, 7, 7–8; Diodorus xi. 6; Polyaenus ii. 20; Seneca, De beneficiis, vi. 31, 4-12). The story that he took part in the attack on Argos which was repulsed by Telesilla, the poetess, and the Argive women, can hardly be true (Plutarch, Mul. virt. 4; Polyaenus, Strat. viii. 33; G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, ii.2 563, note 4). (M. N. T.)
DEMERARA, one of the three settlements of British Guiana,
taking its name from the river Demerara. See Guiana.
DEMESNE (Demeine, Demain, Domain, &c.),[1] that portion of
the lands of a manor not granted out in freehold tenancy, but
(a) retained by the lord of the manor for his own use and occupation
or (b) let out as tenemental land to his retainers or “villani.”
This demesne land, originally held at the will of the lord, in course
of time came to acquire fixity of tenure, and developed into the
modern copyhold (see Manor). It is from demesne as used
in sense (a) that the modern restricted use of the word comes,
i.e. land immediately surrounding the mansion or dwelling-house,
the park or chase. Demesne of the crown, or royal demesne, was
that part of the crown lands not granted out to feudal tenants,
but which remained under the management of stewards appointed
by the crown. These crown lands, since the accession
of George III., have been appropriated by parliament, the
sovereign receiving in return a fixed annual sum (see Civil List).
Ancient demesne signified lands or manors vested in the
king at the time of the Norman Conquest. There were special
privileges surrounding tenancies of these lands, such as freedom
from tolls and duties, exemption from danegeld and amercement,
from sitting on juries, &c. Hence, the phrase “ancient
demesne” came to be applied to the tenure by which the lands
were held. Land held in ancient demesne is sometimes also
called customary freehold. (See Copyhold.)
DEMETER, in Greek mythology, daughter of Cronus and
Rhea and sister of Zeus, goddess of agriculture and civilized life.
Her name has been explained as (1) “grain-mother,” from δηαί,
the Cretan form of ζειαί, “barley,” or (2) “earth-mother,” or
rather “mother earth,” δᾶ being regarded as the Doric form of λῆ.
She is rarely mentioned in Homer, nor is she included amongst
the Olympian gods.
The central fact of her cult was the story of her daughter Persephone (Proserpine), a favourite subject in classical poetry. According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone, while gathering flowers on the Nysian plain (probably here a purely mythical locality), was carried off by Hades (Pluto), the god of the lower world, with the connivance of Zeus (see also Proserpine). The incident has been assigned to various other localities—Crete, Eleusis, and Enna in Sicily, the last being most generally adopted. This rape is supposed to point to an original ἰερὸς λάμος, an annual holy marriage of a god and goddess of vegetation. Wandering over the earth in search of her daughter, Demeter learns from Helios the truth about her disappearance. In the form of an old woman named Deo (= the “seeker,” or simply a diminutive form), she comes to the house of Celeus at Eleusis, where she is hospitably received. Having revealed herself to the Eleusinians, she departs, in her wrath having visited the earth with a great dearth. At last Zeus appeases her by allowing her daughter to spend two-thirds of the year with her in the upper world. Demeter then returns to Olympus, but before her final departure from earth, in token of her gratitude, she instructs the rulers of Eleusis in the art of agriculture and in the solemnities and rites whereby she desires in future to be honoured.
Those who were initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis found a deep meaning in the myth, which was held to teach the principle of a future life, founded on the return of Persephone to the upper world, or rather on the process of nature by which seed sown in the ground must first die and rot before it can yield new life (see Mystery). At Eleusis, Demeter was venerated as the introducer of all the blessings which agriculture brings in its train—fixed dwelling-places, civil order, marriage and a peaceful life; hence her name Thesmophoros, “the bringer of law and order,” and the festival Thesmophoria (q.v.). J. G. Frazer takes the epithet to mean “bearer of the sacred objects deposited on the altar”; L. R. Farnell (Cults of the Greek States, iii. 106) suggests “the bringer of treasure or riches,” as appropriate to the goddess of corn and of the lower world; others refer the name to “the law of wedlock” (θεσμὸς λέκτροιο, Odyssey, xxiii. 296, where, however, D. B. Monro translates “place, situation”). At Eleusis also, Triptolemus (q.v.), the son of Celeus, who was said to have invented the plough and to have been sent by Demeter round the world to diffuse the knowledge of agriculture, had a temple and threshing-floor.
In the agrarian legends of Iasion and Erysichthon, Demeter also plays an important part. Iasion (or Iasius), a beautiful youth, inspired her with love for him in a thrice-ploughed field in Crete, the fruit of their union being Plutus (wealth). According to Homer (Odyssey, v. 128) he was slain by Zeus with a thunderbolt. The story is compared by Frazer (Golden Bough, 2nd ed., ii. 217) with the west Prussian custom of the mock birth of a child on the harvest-field, the object being to ensure a plentiful crop for the coming year. It seems to point to the supersession of a primitive local Cretan divinity by Demeter, and the adoption of agriculture by the inhabitants, bringing wealth in its train in the form of the fruits of the earth, both vegetable and mineral. Some scholars, identifying Iasion with Jason (q.v.), regard Thessaly as the original home of the legend, and the union with Demeter as the ἱερὸς γάμος of mother earth with a health god. Erysichthon (“tearer up of the earth”), son of Triopas or Myrmidon, having cut down the trees in a grove sacred to the goddess, was punished by her with terrible hunger (Callimachus, Hymn to Demeter; Ovid, Metam. viii. 738–878). Perhaps Erysichthon may be explained as the personification of the labourer, who by the systematic cultivation and tilling of the soil endeavours to force the crops, instead of allowing them to mature unmolested as in the good old times. Tearing up the soil with the plough is regarded as an invasion of the domain of the earth-mother, punished by the all-devouring hunger for wealth, that increases with increasing produce. According to another view, Erysichthon is the destroyer of trees, who wastes away as the plant itself loses its vigour. It is possible that the story may originally have been connected with tree-worship. Here again, as in the case of Iasion, a conflict between an older and a younger cult seems to be alluded to (for the numerous interpretations see O. Crusius s.v. in Roscher’s Lexikon).
It is as a corn-goddess that Demeter appears in Homer and Hesiod, and numerous epithets from various sources (see Bruchmann, Epitheta Deorum, supplement to Roscher’s Lexikon, i. 2) attest her character as such. The name Ἰουλώ (? at Delos), from ἱουλος, “corn-sheaf,” has been regarded as identifying the goddess with the sheaf, and as proving that the cult of Demeter originated in the worship of the corn-mother or corn-spirit, the last sheaf having a more or less divine character for the primitive husbandman. According to this view, the prototypes of Demeter and Persephone are the corn-mother and harvest maiden of northern Europe, the corn-fetishes of the field (Frazer, Golden Bough, 2nd ed., ii. 217, 222; but see Farnell, Cults, iii. 35). The influence of Demeter, however, was not limited to corn, but extended to vegetation generally and all the fruits of the earth, with the curious exception of the bean, the use of which was forbidden at Eleusis, and for the protection of which a special patron was invented. In this wider sense Demeter is akin to Ge, with whom she has several epithets in common, and is sometimes identified with Rhea-Cybele; thus Pindar speaks of Demeter χαλκοκρότος (“brass-rattling”), an epithet obviously more
- ↑ The form “demesne” is an Anglo-French spelling of the Old Fr. demeine or demaine, belonging to a lord, from Med. Lat. dominicus, dominus, lord; dominicum in Med. Lat. meant proprietas (see Du Cange). From the later Fr. domaine, which approaches more nearly the original Lat., comes the other Eng. form “domain,” which is chiefly used in a non-legal sense of any tract of country or district under the rule of any specific sovereign state, &c. “Domain” is, however, the form kept in the legal phrase “Eminent Domain” (q.v.).
