Connections of Demeter/Persephone with Other Deities

Among the most disputed issues in the scholarship is the question whether or not the rites held in honor of Demeter and Persephone also included significant connections with, or references to, other important deities and cults. These connections, if they existed, might have taken the form of explicit ascriptions of symbolic or sacramental roles to other gods and goddesses in the rituals; alternatively, they might have been implicit suggestions, indirect allusions to historical antecedents from other religious traditions. If the existence of religio-cultural connections of either kind could be determined with certainty, it would affect our understanding of the nature and significance of the Mysteries at Eleusis; for it is a general principle in religious studies that associations among deities parallel similar associations in the symbolic meanings attached to their cults.

The prime example of an explicit, though esoteric, connection between the goddesses of Eleusis and a deity from another cultic tradition would be the ritual association between Demeter and Dionysos from at least the fourth century BCE onward . The evidence in this case is fairly strong. It is known that these two deities were honored in Athens and elsewhere as "paredroi" [partner deities] (Pausanias 9.8.1; 9.22.5; 9.24.1); less certain is whether this partnership status had any deeper significance. Pindar (5th century BCE) spoke of Dionysos as the god "of the flowing locks who is enthroned beside Demeter" (Isthmian Odes VII, lines 3-5). The Orphics, who were widely influential and had their own Mystery celebrations, identified Dionysos-Zagreus as the son of Persephone and Zeus (Kerényi, 145, 148; Mylonas, 309). The Romans recognized a triad consisting of Ceres, Liber, and Libera, where Ceres corresponded to Demeter, Liber to Dionysos, and Libera to Persephone (Kerényi, 148). Stephanos Byzantios (6th century CE) recorded that the rituals in honor of Persephone were performed "in imitation of Dionysian happenings" ("Agra" 14). There is also a considerable amount of iconographical evidence, including pictures on ancient Greek vases from Attica and Apulia, testifying to a prominent Dionysian presence at Eleusis (Schmidt 162-65; Zuntz 407-11).

On the basis of this and other evidence, Schelling suggested already in the mid-nineteenth century that Dionysos and Iacchos were masculine counterparts of Demeter and Persephone--that indeed they were all aspects of a single deity (490)! In this century, Metzger has proposed that Demeter, Dionysos, and Persephone together formed a kind of holy trinity which presided over Eleusis (326ff.). Deubner has argued that episodes from the life of Dionysos most likely featured in the ritual representations at Eleusis (70). Harrison has gone so far as to assert that "all or nearly all their [the Eleusinian Mysteries'] spiritual significance was due to elements borrowed from the cult of Dionysos" (539). Baring and Cashford follow Harrison in attributing a pivotal role at Eleusis to Dionysos (378f.). Kerényi does the same (127, 139, 148).

Yet even if Dionysos did come to hold a position in the festivals of Eleusis, some would argue that he assumed this function only in his capacity as the patron god of drama and theatrical splendor, not for any constitutive role in the Eleusinian Mysteries as such. In that case, he might have been more analogous to a divine stage manager or set designer than to a ritual performer or object of worship in his own right. At any rate, Mylonas dismisses most of the ancient sources as confused about Dionysos' participation (238, 276). He insists that Dionysos had no significant role whatever in the Eleusinian Mysteries proper, although he admits (308, 318) that "in Roman times [Iacchos] was confused with Bacchus and Dionysos." Frank shares Mylonas's opinion that Dionysus played no important part in Eleusis (296).

The issue is obviously a thorny one, but in the present writer's judgment, the balance of evidence points to a definite correlation between Dionysos/Iacchos and Demeter/Persephone, at least in the later period and probably as far back as the sixth century BCE. Such a correlation, if true, would have greatly colored the experience of the Mysteries and drawn them closer into a syncretistic congruency of meaning with the Dionysian and Orphic Mysteries.

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