On the tombs
of women who had died in early life, this was a favourite subject,
some likeness of the actual lineaments of the deceased being
sometimes transferred to the features of Persephone.
Yet so far, it might seem, when we consider the interest of this
story in itself, and its importance in the Greek religion, that no
adequate expression of it had remained to us in works of art. But in
the year 1857, the discovery of the marbles, in the sacred precinct
of Demeter at Cnidus, restored to us an illustration of the myth in
its artistic phase, hardly less central than the Homeric hymn in its
poetical phase. With the help of the descriptions and plans of Mr.
Newton's book,* we can form, as one always wishes to do in such
cases, a clear idea of the place where these marbles--three statues
of the best style of Greek sculpture, now in the British Museum--were
found. Occupying a ledge of rock, looking towards the sea, at the
base of a [141] cliff of upheaved limestone, of singular steepness
and regularity of surface, the spot presents indications of volcanic
disturbance, as if a chasm in the earth had opened here. It was this
character, suggesting the belief in an actual connexion with the
interior of the earth (local tradition claiming it as the scene of
the stealing of Persephone), which probably gave rise, as in other
cases where the landscape presented some peculiar feature in harmony
with the story, to the dedication upon it of a house and an image of
Demeter, with whom were associated Kore and "the gods with Demeter"--
hoi theoi para Damatri+--Aidoneus, and the mystical or Chthonian
Dionysus.
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