[407] Od. xi. 226, 385, 639, 213, and x. 494.
That she was generally worshipped by the Hellenic tribes we must infer from the cases mentioned in the Ninth Iliad, the one in Ætolia, the other farther North[408]; as well as from her office in regard to the thoroughly national region of the Shades.
~_Her marked and substantive character._~
She has her own strongly marked set of epithets. Of these, one is ἁγνὴ, the severely pure; for with Homer ἁγνὸς is exclusively applicable to divine womanhood, and is given only to Diana and Persephone: then she is ἀγαυὴ, the dread: and lastly, she is ἐπαινὴ, an epithet appropriated to her exclusively, which appears to be Homer’s favourite method for sharply marking out individuality of character. Buttmann has also well observed, that she has this epithet only when mentioned along with Hades, that is, when shown very strictly in her official character; and that ἀγαυὴ is used when she appears alone. Upon this he observes; ‘this way of joining the name of Proserpine with that of Pluto was an old epic formula, handed down even to Homer and our oldest Greek poets from still earlier times, and which they used unchanged[409].’ He would read ἐπ’ αἰνὴ, instead of ἐπαινὴ, but this neither affects the sense (awful, terrible) nor the force of the exclusive appropriation.
[409] Buttmann’s Lexil. p. 62. _in voc._ αἶνος.
There is another sign confirmatory of the belief that the origin of this mythical person must be sought, not in the necessity of finding a queen for Aidoneus, but in an anterior and distinct tradition. Namely, this; that, though she is a daughter of Jupiter[410], she is not provided with a mother. Thus she seems as if she were older than the Olympian œconomy. Venus, Mars, Vulcan, Mercury, are all equipped with a full parentage. The later tradition, which made Persephone the daughter of Ceres, has no other support from Homer than this, that we are left to suppose that Ceres had some offspring by Jupiter, while none is named[411].
The chain of presumptions appears to me to become complete, when we take into view two other pieces of evidence supplied by the poems. In the far East[412], beyond the couch of the morning Sun, some distance up the stream of the great river Ocean, but to the south of the point where it is entered, and at a spot where the shore narrows very much--immediately, in short, before the point of descent--are the groves of Persephone. According to the general rules of interpretation applicable to Homer, this appears to convey to us that the seat of her worship was in the far Southern East, and that her office, as there understood, was that of the goddess or queen of Death. And if she is indeed the reflection, in the mirror of the lower world, of any other known deity, then, both from this great office, and from the peculiar epithet ἁγνὴ, it is most likely to be of Diana, with whom, in the later mythology, she was identified; and, again, through Diana, of Apollo, from whom the light of Diana herself was derived. Or, in other words, she may be for the lower world that reflection of Apollo, which the Homeric Diana was for this earth: and it is worth observation, that the gift of second sight, which she allows to Tiresias, and which therefore is at her disposal beneath ground[413], is the peculiar and exclusive property of Apollo.