The writer of the Homeric [134] hymn had made Celeus a king,
and represented the scene at Eleusis in a fair palace, like the
Venetian painters who depict the persons of the Holy Family with
royal ornaments. Ovid, on the other hand, is more like certain
painters of the early Florentine school, who represent the holy
persons amid the more touching circumstances of humble life; and the
special something of his own which he adds, is a pathos caught from
homely things, not without a delightful, just perceptible, shade of
humour even, so rare in such work. All the mysticism has
disappeared; but, instead, we trace something of that "worship of
sorrow," which has been sometimes supposed to have had no place in
classical religious sentiment. In Ovid's well-finished elegiacs,
Persephone's flower-gathering, the Anthology, reaches its utmost
delicacy; but I give the following episode for the sake of its
pathetic expression.
"After many wanderings Ceres was come to Attica. There, in the
utmost dejection, for the first time, she sat down to rest on a bare
stone, which the people of Attica still call the stone of sorrow.
For many days she remained there motionless, under the open sky,
heedless of the rain and of the frosty moonlight.
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