Читать книгу Heathen mythology, Illustrated by extracts from the most celebrated writers, both ancient and modern - Various - Страница 20

Table of Contents

Ceres, daughter of Saturn and Cybele, was goddess of the productions of the earth. She taught man the art of agriculture, and is represented crowned with wheat, holding a torch in one hand, and in the other an ear of corn; sometimes she carries a sceptre, and sometimes a sickle, and her chariot is drawn by lions or by serpents.

——————"As tempered suns arise

Sweet beamed, and shedding through the lucid clouds

A pleasing calm: while broad and brown, below

Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.

Rich, silent, deep, they stand: for not a gale

Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:

A calm of plenty; till the ruffled air

Falls from its poise, and gives the breeze to blow.

Rent is the fleecy mantle of the sky,

And back by fits the shadows sweep along.

A gaily chequered, heart-expanding view,

Far as the circling eye can shoot around,

Unbounded, tossing in a flood of corn."

Thomson.

Loved by Jupiter, she had by the God a daughter called Proserpine, whom Pluto, God of Hell, seized near the beautiful vale of Enna, in Sicily, and carried with him to his dismal kingdom. Ceres, whose love for her child, almost surpassed even the usual love of mothers, placed on Mount Etna two torches, and sought her "from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve," throughout the world. At last, when she deemed her search well nigh hopeless, she was informed by the nymph Arethusa of the dwelling place of her child, and of the name of him who had torn her beloved one from her paternal care.

Ceres implored Jupiter to interfere, and withdraw her from the infernal regions, which he agreed to do, but found it would be beyond his power, as, by a decree of Destiny, she would not be able to quit her place of concealment, should she have partaken of any nourishment while there; and it was discovered that though she had refused all ordinary food, she had been tempted while in the gardens of Pluto, to pluck a pomegranate, and to eat a few of its seeds. This was sufficient; and the utmost Ceres could obtain, was that she should pass six months of the year with her mother and six months with Pluto, when she became his wife.

"Near Enna's walls a spacious lake is spread,

Famed for the sweetly singing swans it bred;

Pergûsa is its name: and never more

Were heard, or sweeter sounds than on Cayster's shore.

Woods crown the lake, and Phœbus ne'er invades

The tufted fences or offends the shades:

Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bowers,

And the moist ground smiles with enamelled flowers,

The cheerful birds their airy carols sing,

And the whole year is one eternal spring.

Here while young Proserpine, among the maids,

Diverts herself in these delicious shades;

While like a child with busy speed and care,

She gathers lilies here, and violets there;

While first to fill her little lap she strives,

Hell's grizzly monarch at the shades arrives;

Sees her thus sporting on the flowery green,

And loves the blooming maid as soon as seen.

The frighted Goddess to her mother cries:

But all in vain, for now far off she flies;

His urgent flame impatient of delay,

Swift as his thought he seized the beauteous prey,

And bore her in his sooty car away.

Far she behind her leaves her virgin train;

To them too cries, and cries to them in vain.

And while with passion she repeats her call,

The violets from her lap and lilies fall:

She misses them, poor heart! and makes new moan:

Her lilies, oh! are lost, her violets gone.

O'er hills the ravisher, and valleys speeds,

By name encouraging his foamy steeds;

He rattles o'er their necks the rusty reins,

And ruffles with the stroke their shaggy manes

Throws to his dreadful steeds the slackened rein,

And strikes his iron sceptre through the main;

The depths profound thro' yielding waves he cleaves,

And to hell's centre a free passage leaves;

Down sinks his chariot, and his realms of night

The God soon reaches with a rapid flight."

Ovid.

The attempts of Ceres to encourage the art of agriculture were not always favourably received: the King of the Scythians, who loved the sword more than the ploughshare, and the spear more than the reaping hook, having attempted to smother the art taught by Ceres in its infancy, was metamorphosed into a lynx. Nor was this the only instance of the vengeance of the Goddess, who was irritable, and prompt to punish. A young child, whose chief crime was having laughed to see her eat with avidity, was changed into a lizard: while a Thessalian, who had desecrated and attempted to destroy a sacred forest, was doomed to an hunger so cruel, that he devoured his own limbs, and died in the midst of fearful torments.