The logo of the Melammu Project

The Melammu Project

The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East


  The Melammu Project
  
   General description
   Search string
   Browse by topic
   Search keyword
   Submit entry
  
   About
   Open search
   Thematic search
   Digital Library
   Submit item
  
   Ancient texts
   Dictionaries
   Projects
   Varia
   Submit link
  FAQ
  Contact us
  About

  The Newsletter
  To Project Information >

 

Demeter and Persephone (1)

Printable view
Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)

04 Religious and philosophical literature and poetry


Keywords
Demeter
netherworld
Persephone
Period
2nd century CE
Roman Empire
Channel
Helleno-Roman philosophers and scholars


Text
Plutarch, The Face on the Moon 942D-943A:
Many assertions about the gods, Sulla, are current among the Greeks, but not all of them are right. So, for example, although they give the right names to Demeter and Kore, they are wrong in believing that both are together in the same region. The fact is that the former is in the region of earth and is sovereign over terrestrial things, and the latter is in the moon and mistress of lunar things. She has been called both Kore and Persephone, the latter as being a bearer of light and Kore because that is what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of him who looks into it as the light of the sun is seen in the moon. The tales told of the wandering and the quest of these goddesses contain the truth [spoken covertly], for they long for each other when they are apart and they often embrace in the shadow. The statement concerning Kore that now she is in the light of heaven and now in darkness and night is not false, but has given rise to error in the computation of the time, for not throughout six months but every six months we see her being wrapped in shadow by the earth as it were by her mother, and infrequently we see this happen to her at intervals of five months for she cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in the veiled terms: “But to Elysium’s plain, the bourne of earth.” Where the range of earth’s shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth. To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sure though not blessed or divine until their second death.


Source (list of abbreviations)
Plutarch, The Face on the Moon 942D-943A

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001168.php


Illustrations
No pictures


^
T
O
P