The Black Demeter of the Phigalians in Arcadia was another most archaic form of the goddess. In Phigalia the myth of the wrath and reconciliation of the goddess assumed a brutal and unfamiliar aspect. The common legend, universally known, declares that Demeter sorrowed for the enlèvement of her daughter, Persephone, by Hades. The Phigalians added another cause; the wandering Demeter had assumed the form of a mare, and was violently wooed by Poseidon in the guise of a stallion.[1] The goddess, in wrath at this outrage, attired herself in black mourning raiment, and withdrew into a cave, according to the Phigalians, and the fruits of the earth perished. Zeus learned from Pan the place of Demeter's retreat, and sent to her the Mœræ or Fates, who persuaded her to abate her anger. The cave became her holy place, and there was set an early wooden xoanon, or idol, representing the god-
- ↑ The same story was told of Cronus and Philyra, of Agni and a cow in the Satapatha Brahmana (English translation, i. 326), of Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, who "fled in the form of a mare." Vivasvat, in like manner, assumed the shape of a horse, and followed her. From their intercourse sprang the two Asvins. See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 227, or Rig-Veda, x. 17, I. Here we touch a very curious point. Erinnys was an Arcadian cognomen of the Demeter, who was wedded as a mare (Paus., viii. 25). Now, Mr. Max Müller says that "Erinnys is the Vedic Saranyu, the Dawn," and we have seen that both Demeter Erinnys and Saranyu were wooed and won in the form of mares (Select Essays, i. 401, 492–622). The curious thing is that, having so valuable a proof in his hand as the common bestial amours of both Saranyu and Erinnys Demeter, Mr. Max Müller does not produce it. The Scandinavian horse-loves of Loki also recur to the memory. Prajapati's loves in the shape of a deer are familiar in the Brahmanas. If Saranyu = Erinnys, and both = Dawn, then a dawn-myth has been imported into the legend of Demeter, whom nobody, perhaps, will call a dawn-goddess. Schwartz, as usual, makes the myth a storm-myth, and Demeter a goddess of storms (Unsprung der Myth., p. 164).
