In the fourth century the philosopher Sallustius wrote that myths are things that “never happened, but always are.”1 Persephone goes down again this autumn, and comes back up in spring.
In the fourth century the philosopher Sallustius wrote that myths are things that “never happened, but always are.”1 Persephone goes down again this autumn, and comes back up in spring.
The word of the season first, then A to Z.
The way back up. In the Hymn to Demeter, Hermes takes the reins and drives Persephone up out of the dark in a golden chariot, so fast that neither sea nor mountains slow the horses. In 1834 Faraday borrowed the word for one end of his electric cell: the anode.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 375–383. Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches in Electricity, 1834.
Hekate hears Persephone cry out from her cave and goes to help, torch in hand. Afterwards she stays close, walking ahead of her and behind her. The road in Enodia is hodos, which also gave us method and exodus.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 24–25, 52, 438–440. For the name Enodia: Euripides, Helen 570.
A ritual shout that turned into a god. He led the twenty-kilometre walk from Athens to Eleusis, and in 480 BC two men saw the dust of a huge crowd on an empty road and heard the shout with nobody there.
Herodotus 8.65. Aristophanes, Frogs 316 onwards, where the chorus of initiates sings him in.
The right moment, the one you can miss. Hesiod uses it about loading a ship: take the smaller part to sea, leave the rest at home, and kairos is best in everything. His 1914 translator wrote “proportion”, because in Greek the right time and the right amount share a word.
Hesiod, Works and Days 689–694, Evelyn-White 1914.
The word for a trip down to the underworld, and back. Odysseus skips the walk: he digs a pit and lets the dead come to him. Aeneas walks in. Dionysos takes the ferry and has to row. Its answer is anodos, a going up.
Homer, Odyssey 11. Virgil, Aeneid 6. Aristophanes, Frogs.
A cleansing. Aristotle drops the word into his definition of tragedy and doesn’t say what he means, and people have been arguing about it ever since. The medieval Cathars took their name from the same root, “pure”. Oh, that’s so cathartic.
Aristotle, Poetics 1449b24–28.
A lot, as in drawing lots. Before Paris and Menelaos fight, the lots are shaken in a bronze helmet and Paris’s jumps out first. A share of land was a klēros too, and clergy comes from it by way of Latin. Drawing a word on this page is a small one.
Homer, Iliad 3.314–325.
A woman who leaves her house and her weaving for the mountain, to dance for Dionysos with an ivy staff in her hand. The best play about her, the Bacchae, was staged after its author died. It comes from the verb “to rave”, the same root as mania.
Euripides, Bacchae.
Someone who has been shown the rites at Eleusis. The word probably comes from myein, to close the eyes or the lips, and mystery and mystic come from it. The Hymn to Demeter says the rites can’t be spoken, “for deep awe of the gods checks the voice”, and it held: we still only have guesses about what was shown.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 476–479, Evelyn-White 1914.
The trip home, and the song about it. The Odyssey opens with Odysseus trying to win his men their nostos, and failing. In 1688 a Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer, joined it to algos, pain, to name a homesickness that could make people ill: nostalgia.
Homer, Odyssey 1.5–9. Johannes Hofer, Dissertatio medica de nostalgia, Basel 1688.
Night. In Hesiod she comes straight out of Chaos, before almost anything else, and even Zeus steps out of her way. Nox in Latin, night in English: all the same old word.
Hesiod, Theogony 123. Homer, Iliad 14.259–261.
Rites, the secret kind. When Demeter teaches the kings of Eleusis how to worship her, the word the Hymn uses is orgia. English borrowed it for the secret rites of the old gods in the 1500s. The party came later.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 476.
A drug, which in Greek can be a cure, a poison or a spell, and the word doesn’t choose. In Plato’s Phaedrus the god Theuth offers writing to an Egyptian king as a pharmakon for memory, and the king says it will make people forget. Pharmacy kept the cure.
Plato, Phaedrus 274c–275b.
The band that follows Dionysos: the women, the drums, the ivy. He opens the Bacchae by calling them in, “O Lydian band, my chosen and mine own”. In Athens a thiasos could also be a club: friends who met to honour a god, and then had dinner.
Euripides, Bacchae 55–56, Gilbert Murray 1904.
The rule of guests. A stranger at the door gets a bath, food and a seat before anyone asks their name. Nausicaa tells her maids to look after the shipwrecked Odysseus, since “strangers and foreigners in distress are under Jove’s protection”. Xenophobia is the same xenos, turned around.
Homer, Odyssey 6.207–208, Butler 1900.
1 Sallustius, On the Gods and the World 4, Gilbert Murray 1925