She was so sad, it affected the harvest across Greece. How do you think Persephone felt?ĭemeter could no longer see her daughter and missed her hugely. He wanted the lovely Persephone to be his wife. Hades - the God of the Underworld - arrived through the hole and captured Persephone. One day she was walking in a beautiful meadow and gathering flowers to take home when a huge hole opened up in the ground. Demeter had a kind and beautiful daughter, called Persephone, who she loved very much. She was a very important Goddess to Ancient Greek people, who farmed a lot of their food. Excavated in the late 19th century, it is now in the Museum at Eleusis.ĭemeter was the Ancient Greek Goddess of the harvest. The second caryatid from the other side of the gateway is much better preserved. The figure is very worn, having stood for centuries above ground, but the gorgon head at her breast and the sacred container (cista) on her head are still visible. Clarke identified it as Demeter, but it is more likely to represent a priestess. The local people used to heap manure around it, believing it protected the fertility of their fields. The caryatid was removed from Eleusis in 1801 by E.D. Since participants were sworn to secrecy, details of the ceremonies remain a mystery to this day, but they were connected with rituals of rebirth and the afterlife. The festival was still important in the Roman period, and some Roman emperors were initiated into the cult. The Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most important of all Greek religious festivals, began with the worshippers walking the twelve miles from Athens to Eleusis. The deliberate reference to classical Athens, a city admired by the Romans, emphasises the connection between Athens and the sanctuary at Eleusis. This Roman caryatid resembles the better-known Greek caryatids of the Erechtheion, a temple of the 5th century BC on the Athenian Acropolis. It was part of a building programme begun around 50 BC, by which time Greece was a Roman province. This is the upper part of one of a pair that flanked the gateway to the inner courtyard of the sanctuary of Demeter, Greek goddess of fertility. A caryatid is a sculpted female figure that acts as an architectural column.
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