The Ancients - Demeter with Natalie Haynes

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Demeter is the Goddess of the Harvest and Agriculture in Ancient Greek mythology.Mother of Persephone, and daughter of Kronos and Rhea, Demeter is often overlooked in myth despite her immense power. Demeter's role gave insight into how the Ancient Greeks viewed not only the harvest and it's bounty - but their fear of devastating famines and a Mother's wrath.In this episode, Tristan welcomes back Natalie Haynes to plunge into the mythology surrounding Demeter and her significance to Ancient Greek society.Senior Producer: Elena GuthrieAssistant Producer: Annie ColoeEditor: Aidan Lonergan & Annie ColoeScriptwriter: Andrew HulseVoice Actor: Nichola WooleyOther episodes in this series include: Zeus, Hera, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, King Midas, Achilles, Poseidon, Medusa, Hades, and Persephone.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. and sky. So asks salt-kissed Metra, princess of Thessaly. They are the first words to sound in the palace hall for some time. Only Metra and her father, King Erisixon, are left, and the king struggles to speak any more. Words are hard to form with shattered teeth and splintered gums. His palace in Thessaly is a plate picked clean. There is no food in the pantries, nor fruit in the orchards, nor fodder in the stables. They were the first places Erisikthon

ransacked. There is no birdsong in the palace gardens. Erisixon stalked the birds with bow and arrow and devoured some feather, beak, and fluted bone. There isn't even the sound of termites. Erisixon sucked them from the palace timbers like marrow from a cracked bone. like marrow from a cracked bone. His appetite is unnatural, insatiable. It has all but destroyed him. That is why Metra calls upon the Muses, for explanation, for aid.

The company of sisters oblige, but they do not descend to the palace hall alone. An older woman stands among them. Golden ears of corn are woven into greying hairs, a circlet bright as any torch. About her neck, the seed pods of poppies are strung like beads. They punctuate her heavy movement with a whispering rattle. This is the source of your father's curse, sing the muses. This is the source of his hunger. Demeter of the good grain, goddess of abundance. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and welcome back to our

special series on the Greek gods and goddesses. Last time it was the turn of Persephone, now it's the turn of her mother, Demeter. Goddess of the harvest, goddess of fertility, but also a goddess who you absolutely did not want to offend, you did not want to get on the wrong side of. end you did not want to get on the wrong side of. Following this, we have a chat with the amazing, the best-selling author, the broadcaster, the comedian Natalie Haynes. I was fortunate enough a few weeks back to head over to a studio in Soho to interview Natalie in person. It was a fantastic chat. We really explore the figure of Demeter, especially the story of what she did following the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, god of the underworld,

and how Demeter was determined to retrieve her daughter and would go to extreme measures to do so, to force even Zeus, king of the gods, to bow down to her will. It is a tale and a half. I really do hope you enjoy. Here's Natalie to talk all the things Demeter. The muser's song opens in forte. The crack of an axe and the branches of a great oak creaking in pain. The palace of Thessaly is to be expanded. Not even a sacred grove to Demeter is to stand in its way. But while King Erisixon's woodsmen have leveled the lesser trees, they dare not touch the great oak. They have seen the eyes of Dryad, a tree nymph, peeping from the knots in its bark. The Dryad's residence gives the king no pause. When he hears of the woodsman's reticence, he heads to the tree with an axe of his own,

a blade fresh from the whetstone's kiss. One bite. Two. Now three, now four. The hatchet's unger splits the trunk in half. It is a death sentence to the dryad. Without an oaken shell, her only fate is to fade. But not before she has her revenge. Bleeding resin from mortal wounds, she flees to Demeter's feet and recounts the desecration of her grove. The goddess's fury is a rasping, threshing sound.

She can think of only one punishment worthy of Erisichthon's transgression. Lemos. Demeter's boon to the world is abundance, fertility, fecundity. Lemos, then, is her shadow, her absence, a thing of paucity, poverty, famine. It is the dryad that must parley on Demeter's behalf. After all, for the goddess of the good grain to face Lemos, would be for the head of a coin to face the tail. The dryad searches all of hunger's haunts. The grain husks in an empty

silo. The last drop in a water skin. The gristle in the bowels of a cauldron. And when at last she finds Lemos, it is in the form of a locust at the heart of a swarm. Lemos' speech is the click of hind legs against wings. She will discharge Demeter's dire sentence. Erisixon will cave without end. His hunger will consume everything he owns. The king notices it immediately. He wakes from dreams of feasting to an ache in his belly. Platters of food could no more sate it than the thirst of a shipwrecked sailor could drain an

ocean. Thessaly's riches begin to vanish down his gullet. First the royal finery, then the gold, then the jewels. Then he must turn to his daughter, Saltkiss Metra. He sells her hand to a nearby princeling for a bride's dowry that should stock his larder for years. But Metra is already beloved of another. Poseidon, lord of the deep. Whenever she lifts a conch to her ear, she hears him whisper sweet nothings. Whenever she walks the beach, he directs the waves to scrawl her name in the sand. And so when Metra begs to return to her father, or is she not the most dutiful of daughters, Poseidon gives her the ability to shift, to bend, to warp her form like

quicksilver. From the highest tower of her princeling's haul, she takes to the wing as a ghoul. It is a turn of the moon before Metra can shed beak and feather back in Thessaly. By then, Erisichthon is alone. He has eaten himself out of house and home entirely. His darling daughter's return is nothing to him but another mouth to feed. At first. For Erisixon's hunger has not only bred disregard, but a desperate cunning. When he learns of Metra's god-gift, he sees a way to keep his belly full.

He will sell her hand in marriage to another princeling. She will twist her form, she will return home, and the ruse will repeat, again and again and again. Metra does not protest. Her devotion is as depthless as her father's appetite. But before long, there are no princes left to fall. left to fall. So Eristhikthon must sell her to the merchants, then to the craftsmen, then to the soldiers,

then to the poorest farmer, a payment of pittance and a heel of bread, and then to no one at all. And his hunger continues, unabated. Now there is only one thing left for you to consume,

sings Demeter, bringing the Musa's story to a close. And Salkis Metra shudders, the same prickle at the neck she feels every time she returns to the palace in animal form. Tis her father's hungering gaze.

She does not flee though. No, she offers herself willingly. Or is she not the most dutiful of daughters? Erisixon licks his lips. He leans forward in his throne, ready to pounce. Then Demeter steps between her and her father. Not your daughter, king. She is not yours, remember? You have sold her. The only thing left to you is this. And Demeter takes Erisichthon's wrist, twisting it till one finger hangs between his shattered teeth and splintered gums. He takes one bite. Just one. Two. Now three. Now four. Natalie, always a pleasure. Great to have you on the podcast thanks for having me now you're more than welcome i had no idea with the goddess of demeter just how wrathful a figure she could be at times i think the thing is that we tend to sort of squish her in because she's the goddess of agriculture and grain that we tend to sort of think of her in a kind of Mother Earth kind of thing.

And firstly, they're fully separate goddesses. Gaia, obviously, is a whole separate goddess. And so that doesn't help us. And also, Gaia is capable of being pretty murderous just on the quiet. You know, the Trojan War is caused in some versions of the story because she and Zeus decide there are too many people.

It's population anxiety. It's like, oh, we're too heavy for Gaia. So they have a war to exterminate some of us. But Dem demeter is you can see where the huggy idea comes from you know you're gonna you want to think that you've got a benevolent goddess in charge of the harvest of grain and the things that are you know really basic subsistence stuff but i think because of that it is tempting for people to take her not that seriously it's you know she's so nourishing and so kind so she must be and it's like yeah well i would definitely have thought that i think i probably wouldn't have been as exploitative of it as zeus and hades are when they decide that because you know she's just their sister and anyway what could she do about it

that hades will kidnap and traffic his own niece Demeter's daughter Persephone to the underworld but that's what really gets Demeter's rage going and there's something I enjoyed writing all of the chapters of Divine Might but there is something really profoundly moving to me in the absolute relentlessness of the rage that Demeter has when you mess with her daughter. I think she is the absolute role model of mothers who won't quit when their daughters are threatened. And so there is something I think really inspirational in her. It is absolutely relentless and we will definitely get to that story. But I think let's set a bit more of the context of who Demeter exactly is. I mean, where exactly does she sit in the Greek pantheon?

Right up at the top. She does feel like one of the more senior ones. She is one of the biggies. So the sort of big names on Mount Olympus are Zeus, obviously king of the gods, Hera, queen of the gods. Their brothers are Poseidon and Hades, king of the seas, king of the underworld. But also in the mix, two sisters, Demeter, goddess of grain, and Hestia, the forgotten goddess, the goddess of the seas, king of the underworld, but also in the mix, two sisters, Demeter, goddess of grain, and Hestia, the forgotten goddess, the goddess of the hearth, who is

absolutely omnipresent in ancient myth. Although she doesn't appear in very many stories, she's always the central role. We're told from the Homeric hymn to Hestia that she has a place in every temple, every home of every immortal god, and every mortal home has an altar or offering space for Hestia, but totally forgotten in the modern world. So as happens occasionally, the female characters get overlooked and the emphasis goes on to the male ones. So she is one of those right at the top, as you've highlighted there. She's one of those big hitters, yeah. And with these ancient societies, sometimes we overlook this today, but the harvest,

this is so important. And so Demeter's role, hereter's role it is one of the most important in the whole pantheon of deities absolutely because there isn't the same distance from food production that we have now obviously because in for example 5th century Athens you don't have even by 1st century BCE Rome and obviously the expanse of Italy will have big farms producing food for other people. They'll be importing grain from Egypt and places like that. But in Athens in, say, the 5th century BCE, this is a much more people-have-enough-land-to-feed-their-own-family kind of world. So although obviously there is slavery, you don't have these gigantic estates where land is being

worked by people who probably never saw the inside of a house. You have a much smaller scale means of production. It's still exploitative, of course, but it's just understandable scale, I think. Understandable for the people in it, it's not understandable to us. And so I think it's pretty well inconceivable that you wouldn't have thought about the importance of the weather and the harvest in the average person's day, because you would know the consequences that, you know, if there were terrible weather around the time of the harvest and you couldn't get a good supply of grain, then you knew that people would be having fewer rations through the winter. You know, this isn't something theoretical. This is real. And so I think probably that's why she

seems so present, if you see what I mean. I always say that the weather is really present in Greece, which is why I think you can see this sort of centrality of Zeus. And it's true, the weather is really present. You know, you don't have double glazing. You have, you know, when there's a storm, if you're ever lucky slash unlucky enough to be in a huge thunderstorm in Greece, you really know about it. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. So you, you know, it doesn't mess around. And the same, I think, with the harvest, you can't, fair enough. So, you know, it doesn't mess around, huh? And the same, I think, with the harvest. You can't, there's no distance between you and the food supply. You're really there knowing about it.

Absolutely. The weather, the sea in most places in Greece too, and the harvest, isn't it? So, it's no surprise that those things are linked to these senior deities of the Greek pantheon. Now, with the importance of the harvest and the figure of Demeter, I'm guessing that she is regularly portrayed in ancient art. But how is she normally portrayed? She's often almost always shown with her daughter, with Persephone, who's sometimes called Corée, which just means girl. A kouros is the type of young man statue that we see. I'm sure you must have done a podcast on ancient sculpture before now.

And Corée is Persephone. I'm sure you must have done a podcast on ancient sculpture before now. And Corrie is Persephone, so this is her role as the sort of type of young girl at the point of, but not yet, marriage. Obviously, that's not how I categorise women's lives, but ancient societies were a bit different. And so they're usually shown together. And Demeter is often shown with grains of wheat, with stalks, with stems, things like that in her hands. She's often shown with torches. This is part of the myth of her searching for Persephone, which I'm sure we'll come to. She's often shown with, I don't want to spoil it,

she's often shown with mortal man, who is very keen on the Eleusinian mysteries, which is a particular category of Demeter worship. We know only limited amounts about it because it was considered blasphemous for ancient writers to write about it. So it's really frustrating. You'll just find, you know, suddenly Pausanias or someone will break off and say, oh, but it's forbidden to say more. And you're like, mate, I really need to know, but you can't. So she's often shown, as I say, with stalks of wheat. She's often shown with torches because she's in pursuit of her lost daughter. And she's usually shown in this kind of beneficent mindset. There's a really lovely vase in the British Museum in London where she's badly damaged. But we still know it's her because her name is written on the vase and it's early.

So the gods and goddesses have these fantastic long pointy noses, very long fingers and big feet. They look amazing. And in that, she's going to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis so they're seen in Thetis they'll be the parents of Achilles they're not yet obviously it's not a shotgun wedding quite a long time for shotguns for a start and although Demeter is damaged as I say you can still see she's wearing this incredible dress with animals on it's really wonderful and she and Hestia are their arms are intact even if their faces are damaged. Demeter's the worst. And you can see that sort of mid-conversation there, hands are gesturing,

and it's like, he's done what? She's done this. It looks like they're having a fantastic chat on the way to this wedding. And they're right at the front of the procession going to the house of Peleus and Thetis. So she's obviously very family-oriented. And I wish that her relatives always reciprocated her male relatives could could certainly make a bit of an effort to try harder her female relatives usually do a little bit better not all of them though looking at you guy i love that they're looking at the sculpture and as you say these different scenes that relate to different myths associated with this goddess and so i don't want to give too much away, but let's also focus a bit on

the sanctuaries and temples of Demeter. There were quite a few around the Greek world dedicated to that particular goddess. Yeah, of course. I mean, Eleusis is the great centre of worship for Demeter and the worship of the Eleusinian mistress was incredibly common slash popular. It's frustrating that we don't know more about it, but I think often it's the case when it's something where women are doing the majority of the worshipping that we end up finding not too much about. Because if there are areas of worship that men can't enter, physical areas of the worship that men can't enter, we find the same problem, if anything more so, with Artemis worship. You just have to accept that we're not going to hear about it because we don't have writing from women in these subjects.

And this kind of leads us on to the first of these myths that I really want to explore in detail regarding Demeter. I might butcher the name of this figure, but Erisichthon. Erisichthon, yeah. Erisichthon, okay, because he doesn't have a very good interaction with Demeter and this grove. He's an obnoxious little snitch, isn't he? I mean, he really really is so he goes into her sacred grove and he brings i can't remember how many 20 i guess men with axes and they chop down sacred trees and you know generally if you do anything even slightly even if it's incidental even if you didn't mean it even if you didn't know if you affront a goddess in some way or a god the

punishment will be swift and terrible and you'll never be seen again look what happens to Hippolytus whose only offense as far as Aphrodite is concerned is that he basically doesn't like having sex with anybody and she punishes him by I mean the entire play Hippolytus is the answer at the end of which spoiler he's not still alive and so you go into Demeter's sacred grove you start chopping down trees and then the goddess herself appears to you and doesn't blast you off the face of the earth but instead says stop chopping down my trees which most of us would take as at the very least quite a polite and restrained response or a goddess yeah hey buddy don't do any more of that yeah enough now and eric sixth on says no I'm going to build a big banqueting hall and I need the wood and then all my friends are going

to come to a banquet so he absolutely deserves it it. She says, well, in that case, you'll really be hungry. And she blasts him with a ravening hunger that can never be sated. So he eats everything. He eats what we would consider to be food. And indeed, what the ancient Greeks considered to be food is quite a large category relative to what I would consider to be food. I speak as the vegetarian in the room. But then he starts eating things which aren't food. He goes through piles of refuse, trying to find more and more to eat. Dionysus comes in on it, so he's desperate to drink as well. And that can't be sated. His parents are so mortified by this sort of desperate, clawing hunger that they start telling people that he's had a chariot accident. He's not there.

I think his dad appealed to Poseidon, I think, and says, you know, can you have him and feed him because I've run out. He eats an ilurus. An ilurus is, well, when I was a student, it used to be translated as cat, but it probably isn't a cat. It's an animal that you keep in your house to keep away or catch pests. And while we would probably mean a cat, archaeozoologists, it's a real job, haven't found any domestic cat skeletons. And so it seems more likely they used pine martins and weasels, things like that, to keep mice and things out of their homes. So probably an Ilurus is a pine martin or a weasel. Anyway, Erisichthon eats it, doesn't matter what it is. It's dead

either way. He eats a war horse. He eats a race horse. I mean, he eats everything. He's found begging at a place where three roads meet, which is where people would dump their rubbish. And his hunger can never be sated. He just is a horrible image. I think it's in Callimachus. He says no matter how much he eats, he sort of melts away like a wax doll in the sun and so there is actually a stephen king short story called was it even a short novel called thinner i think under his pen name of richard bachman do you remember this where the guy is cursed in a similar way and he eats and eats and eats and he just gets he starts out sort of slightly overweight and he's really thrilled to lose some weight and then of course it becomes a more and more terrible thing so it always makes

me think of that i'm not sure if stephen king was thinking of kalimachus when he wrote it but it's a really creepy story and it always makes me think of it it's a nasty story and of course greek mythology is full of nasty stories it's true not that many with demeter at the center but as i say he is particularly obnoxious i think eric sixth on so it's quite hard to sympathise with him it's like dude you can't go around chopping down sacred trees no absolutely and as you say in the grand scheme of things compared to many of the other deities Demeter does go and say look you should stop doing this gives him a chance and most gods wouldn't do that absolutely right most of them would just blast you off the face of the earth for you know messing with anything that was sacred to them in the first place.

She absolutely gives him fair warning. And then payback is full on. It's full on indeed. And talking about that, no chances whatsoever we'll get to that when we come to Demeter's mortal lover in a bit, which is a pretty horrific tale in itself. But let's go on to the main one. You've mentioned the name already, Persephone. Yes. And in our Greek Gods and Goddesses series, we've already now covered an episode looking in detail at the story of Persephone.

But just so that we're all on the same page, who is Persephone and why is she abducted? She's the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. And obviously this is slightly creepy to us because they are siblings in myth and particularly in myth about the divine you get this sort of thing happening quite a lot is when you've only got a limited number of characters at the beginning of a creation story then you do end up with what look like really dubious pairings but Persephone therefore is she's very young this always it always really bothers me that there's a sort of romantic reading of this narrative which it doesn't in any way warrant if you go to our ancient sources so in the Homeric hymn to Demeter we're told that she's Paidzusa and she's playing

like a child, Pais as a child, with the daughters of Oceanus when she's kidnapped by Hades. She's Kallikopedi, she's the girl with a face like a flower. And Zeus and Hades conspire to have him kidnap Persephone. And he duly does that by arriving in his chariot pulled by immortal horses. He scoops her up. She's been lured to the right spot by Gaia. So yeah, helping out, I'm afraid, in a pretty nasty conspiracy. Gaia makes a hundred flowers bloom from a single stem. And this little girl is so entranced by this extraordinary and beautiful sight that she goes to look closer. The ground splits open and Hades suddenly appears and drags

her away. And it's such a harrowing scene in the Greek. She's described as Ayakuzan. It's against her will. She screams the whole way. She screams for her father. And the Greek is devastating here. It says the many named son of Kronos, which is a poetic way of saying Hades, takes her and she screams for the son of Kronos, meaning Zeus, to save her. So you can tell from the Greek, even though we would separate out and explain the names in English, I think, that there's no hope for help because they're essentially the same. The son of Kronos and the son of Kronos are in it together. So she screams until she goes underground. Hades takes her underground, at which point she realizes there's no point in screaming anymore. And everyone sort of pretends that they didn't hear or see anything. The hymn says that no one heard or saw anything mortal or immortal,

but actually a couple of people do hear. Hecate hears, and Helios, the sun god, obviously has a bird's eye view of everything. Demeter searches for Persephone night and day because she hears that final scream. And so she's terrified that something awful has happened to her daughter, which has, of course. And she searches for her for nine days and nights. That's why she's so often depicted, I think, with torches in Greek art, because the Eleusinian mistress worship of her recalls this desperate point in her quest to find her daughter. And she searches and searches, and eventually Hecate says, well, I heard her screaming, we should go and speak to Helios. And Helios says, yeah, your brother's taken her and she's going to marry him. And you should be grateful because,

you know, even though he's your brother, he's a very sort of worthy son-in-law. Just to clarify, so Helios, he is God of the sun. He is God of the sun. So he's got everything. He can see the lot. Yeah. And so Demeter demands her daughter be returned and nobody listens to her because she's so easily underestimated, I think, because she's nice and because she makes grain. It's like, well, what could she possibly easily underestimated, I think, because she's nice and because she makes grain. It's like, well, what could she possibly do? And the answer is she can withdraw from the divine sphere. She withdraws from Mount Olympus and she searches on regular earth among mortals for her daughter. She won't go back to Olympus. She exhibits really kind of ritual mourning behaviour. She doesn't bathe, she doesn't eat or drink, and gods obviously

don't need to eat and drink to survive, they're immortal, but it's part of their kind of beautiful immortal existence that they drink ambrosia and eat nectar and all that stuff. And she does none of that. She goes and lives among mortals, she looks after baby boy, the son of Kellyus, Inalusis, and Metaneira is his mother's name. Shall we explore that story of Callius? Because that's a really interesting one. You've got Iambe there as well. So I'd really love to delve into the detail.

It's a gorgeous part of the story, isn't it? It is, isn't it? So she turns up grief-stricken, obviously, but disguised. But like quite a few goddesses, she's not a mistress of disguise. I would say Athene is really good at disguises, although she sometimes loses interest. There's a great bit in the Odyssey where she turns up at Ithaca and she talks to Telemachus, the of odysseus and penelope disguised as one of his friends and then obviously when the conversation is finished she just turns into a bird and scoots

straight through the roof and you're like oh yeah good disguise but demeter's probably if anything even worse disguises than that because she meets the daughters of kelius and metanira at a well and they say oh you seem like a goddess. And it's like, well, sort of an early fail on the disguise front. And she says, I'm looking for some kind of employment. I could be a nanny. I could do that sort of thing. And they're like, oh, yeah, our mother could maybe.

And they go home and say, we met this beautiful godlike woman. And so her mother says, oh, yeah, go and get her and bring her back. And then when she turns up, she's sort of gigantically tall. Goddesses and gods in Greek myth are bigger than us. And so she's sort of towering in the doorway and they realise that she's something special, a divinity. And they offer her this very ornate chair to sit on, but she's grieving. So she doesn't want a comfortable and ornate chair. What she wants is what Ayambe, who is, we're not given her status, but I think we're supposed to assume that she is part of the household, but not of the family, so probably a slave. And she offers Demeter a

wooden stool, a plain stool with a fluffy white sheepskin on it. And this much kind of plainer seat Demeter accepts. And she sits there and she doesn't say anything and she doesn't eat or drink, she refuses wine and food. And it's quite hard to explain the rules of Ksenia to a modern audience because we don't have anything quite like it but for the ancient Greeks Ksenia is hospitality it's this sort of interactive obligation that you have so if you turn up at someone's house and you need a bed for the night or some food they're sort of obliged to give it to you and then you have a connection between your two families forever you exchange gifts when you leave when they come to you the same thing happens and when

i say it's an obligation what i mean is in euripides alcestis when hercules heracles turns up at the house of admetus who's just lost his wife spoiler alcestis admetus swears his entire household to secrecy so that hercules isn't put off by the fact that they're in mourning so they can't tell him that mistress of the house has just died i mean it's really and it's weird for us because obviously the word xenos is the root of xenophobia um that for the greeks that's that's not a concept that quite fits because the same word xenos is means both stranger and friend in greek a stranger is at the risk of sounding a bit you know wholesome like the muppets but in you know why wouldn't

you want to i guess is a stranger is just a friend you haven't yet met so interesting isn't it and how that supplies you know that real world thing in the ancient greek mindset is absolutely to this particular myth of demeter and also with demeter when she is she's at rock bottom at this she absolutely is she can't eat she can't drink she can only sit on this little stool and it's iambay who realizes what the right thing is to do and it's just the most extraordinary moment in the homeric hymn this very low status woman when faced with this devastated figure who you know perhaps they know is a goddess or at least they suspect it she makes jokes she does sort of slapstick

she makes funny jokes and eventually Demeter starts to smile and then to laugh and then says the hymn to ease her gracious heart and so it's Ayambe who sees that in a moment of crisis actually you don't leave that person alone even if they don't seem particularly receptive you just keep trying to reach them one way or another if they can't do it with the traditional obligations of hospitality food and drink she'll find another way through and the hymn's really clear it says that even in later times you know Ambe and Demeter continue to have this relationship so they become pals through this it's just the nicest bit of the story I think it's such a kind of radical thing I feel very strongly that people are very quick, I think, to say, oh, this or that isn't an appropriate subject for comedy. I think that

suggests to me a really simplistic relationship with comedy. Making a joke about it isn't not taking it seriously. If you're a comedian, and Ambe clearly is, it's taking it really seriously. It's giving it your full professional attention. And so she sort of realises, Ambe realises something really important which is that when someone's in this kind of really terrible place they maybe need you to go down and hold their hand as they climb their way out you know it's lovely it's a lovely and a very powerful image and i can imagine for you you're an author you're a broadcaster but you're also a comedian and you can kind of probably understand and very much align with that the power of jokes

in difficult times in that atmosphere that demeter is in at that time she's at the court she's a stranger but she's been welcomed in what do they offer this goddess who's at rock bottom well after she's sort of defrosted a little thanks to iambay. She's prepared to accept wine, but she insists that they mix it to this quite strange recipe. So they add honey and grain and herbs. I mean, it sounds absolutely vile, but this kind of, the Greeks watered their wine anyway. They have stronger wine than us probably, but then they dilute it. But the addition of herbs and honey, I mean, it sounds foul to me, but it becomes part of the worship of the Eleusinian mistress so obviously this mysterious sacred recipe always makes it sound a bit like you know the recipe for coke or KFC or something but I assume it's marginally nicer than those but yeah and then

they give her a job which is to be nanny to the youngest child who's a boy and she's a really she's a really good nanny insofar as she brings him up as though he were immortal rather than mortal and that goes wonderfully and yet at the same time she's a really bad nanny and i would recommend you tried none of her child rearing tips at home because they include things like well feeding him ambrosia instead of regular human food is fine because it makes him grow really strong and really quickly but at night she doesn't put him in a cot she puts him in the fire because uh and this appears in other greek myths too that you have to burn mortality out of someone that obviously doesn't

work please don't try it so yeah when they find her you know depositing their child in the fireplace one night like a animate log they're not delighted and they sort of she drops the baby on the floor when they scream which again is a terrible thing to do. Don't do that either. And then she reveals her true self and says, you know, they've had Demeter living under their roof and they should be really grateful she was going to make their son immortal. But now he'll grow up mortal just like the rest of the family. So they've missed their chance. But then they're still sort of groveling. And she says, honestly, it's the bit that makes me think I really wish I had the chutzpah to do this when faced with something we're doing something someone disapproves of they scream that she's putting their baby in the fire and she responds by telling them they should build her a temple yes build me a temple mortals is how i would like to approach everything from now on so they build her a temple in eleusis and she explains the eleusinian mysteries to them and as we know from the from the rest of the poem, having access to these mysteries, knowing the secrets of them, means that you stand a reasonably good chance of a happy afterlife. Intriguingly, it says in this poem. And normally, the Greeks worry a bit more about what happens to you when you're alive, but apparently it's a good bet to be on Demeter's good side, thanks to the mysteries. Apparently, it's a good bet to be on Demeter's good side, thanks to the mysteries. I'm really glad we explored that story in detail, because I know it's almost like a pit stop in the larger story of Demeter.

Yeah, it's a great bit, though, isn't it? But also that part, you know, the mystery, Eleusinian mysteries. This is almost the origin story of how this cult, the worship of Demeter at that particular place comes about and becomes so popular, yet mysterious, for hundreds of years afterwards. Yeah. I mean, it's really, really interesting because, you know, we find various kind of, like, connections to it, sort of tips to it, or Easter eggs lurking around. And you always get it shut down, you know. Someone like Pausanias will say, oh, this thing happens and it depicts a pomegranate, but we can't say anything about that. And you're like, oh, what is it about the pomegranate? You can't know. Sorry. No. So yeah, we know the pomegranate features in the story of Persephone and Demeter, but that's all we know.

Well, I mean, interestingly, I was talking to somebody the other week and one of her students is doing a PhD on pomegranates being used as contraceptive in the ancient world. So obviously pomegranates played a much bigger part in the lives of women and girls than I realised. But I would not have found that out from Pausanias. So, yeah. I have no idea. You must have missed that line, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, going on from Eleusis and this part of Demeter's story. Come on, let's keep this story going because it's a really fascinating one yeah it's a page turner she's left the court yes how does she go about well what does she do next well then she refuses to go back to olympus and her grief if anything seems to redouble now she doesn't have this baby to look after i think she becomes all the more traumatized by the loss of her daughter. And Zeus sends god after god after god to try and get her to come back, and she refuses. And he sends bribes. I think, is it Iris he sends first, the rainbow goddess? And it's like, oh, come back. She's like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And the word in the Greek is manis, which is the same word

that's used of Achilles' wrath in the Iliad. So the first line in the Iliad says, sing, goddess Thea, of the wrath, men, of Achilles. It's the exact same word. We think of Achilles as this absolute, almost a berserker when he gets onto the battlefield because his rage is so terrifying. That is not a word we expect to see in context of this sort of lovely nourishing goddess. But here it is, you know, you take her daughter and she is not here for you. So she causes a famine, which lasts a year. And it's only then that Zeus really accepts that he can't actually, you know, he and Hades had just taken for granted that

between them, they could stitch this up and she would just accept it. They don't ask her about Persephone getting married. They don't ask Persephone, but they don't ask their sister either. And eventually he folds. He realises that if there's no food, humans will all die and then there'll be no sacrifices to him. And now we're starting to get personal. So now he's upset. And so only at this point, in fact, does he realise that he'll have to respond. So he sends Hermes down to the underworld. Hermes is the messenger god. So he is in his role as psychopomp, the escorter of souls. He can move down to the underworld in a way that other people and gods-

Psychopomp? You heard. Wow. Yeah. And I'm just going to casually drop that into a sentence whenever I get the chance, but today is that day. So yeah, he scoots down to the underworld. And when she sees him, Persephone literally jumps for joy, just in case we'd had any idea that the relationship with Hades might have been something she was accepting now. No, she literally jumps up for joy. And Hades is told by Hermes that he's got to let Persephone go. And he agrees to it and smiles

at Persephone and says, think of me kindly, won't you? At which point I find him, I think, as despicable as anyone who's ever been. You kidnapped her, you trafficked her, you entered her into a forced marriage with you. She's been there for well over a year and she still hates you. And now it's like, oh, think of me kindly, like a wheedling child. It's like, you are revolting to me. And then he does something that is the more famous part of the story, but generally for the wrong reasons, I think. He force feeds her a pomegranate seed. He does so lathre, secretly, says the Greek. And you think, well, how can you force feed someone secretly? You have to read the poem quite closely to realise that he's keeping it secret, not from Persephone. He force feed someone secretly you have to read the poem quite closely to realize that he's keeping it secret not from Persephone he force feeds her

you know in the same way that suffragettes were force-fed he force feeds her a pomegranate seed huh he's keeping it secret from Hermes because he's scared that Hermes will grass him up to Zeus so again she's described Persephone is described as Iakadzousan, I think. It's the longer version. No, Iakadzomenon, against her will. And as we know, of course, when she gets back to her mother, Hermes takes the chariot. Hades loans the chariot. So he's playing nice the whole time.

He loans his chariot and the immortal horses to Hermes. Hermes takes it all the way back to Demeter. And the two lay eyes on one another. And the language is just gorgeous. It's of same-mindedness. They are homophron in Greek, so they have the same mind and they gladden each other's hearts and they ease each other's grief. It's really interesting, the language of how people meet in this poem, because when men meet men, what you tend to get is deceit, as happens with Hades and Hermes just there. When women meet women, what you get is this consolation, this meeting of minds and hearts.

There are more examples still to come. And we saw it earlier with Hecate helping Demeter out. And so what happens at this point is that Demeter must ask Persephone if she ate anything while she was in the underworld. And I say what must happen, because at this point is that Demeter must ask Persephone if she ate anything while she was in the underworld. And I say what must happen because at this point the manuscript is corrupted. And so this is conjecture from papyrologists. But that must be it because the answer is there. Persephone says, he force-fed me pomegranate seed. And that of course means that she's going to have to spend part of every year forever in the underworld which again people often like to construe as you know this incredibly romantic narrative where hades is a god who loves too much but this is his way of keeping her you know for just part of each year and it's like she's not the goth queen he is

not the goth king he is just a horrible trafficking controlling man and she is somebody who is viciously mistreated by him but the eventual conclusion is that she'll be able to stay back on the surface of the earth with Demeter for at least some of the time. And then Rhea, the goddess, is sent. She's the mother of Demeter, so grandmother of Persephone, but also the mother of Zeus. He sends Rhea to sort of go and ask Demeter to come back. So it's like, did you behave appallingly and then send your mum to try and clean up your yeah okay but that is what happens and again goddess's meeting means that there's this beautiful bonding moment where ria asks demeter to hasten the harvest along because we're all so hungry and demeter does that so we don't all starve because demeter decides

that now she's got her daughter back it's also also such a horrific family affair, isn't it? Yeah, isn't that always the way with the Olympians? You've got the mother coming in at the end, but Hades is Persephone's uncle. Zeus is the brother of Demeter, as is Hades, conspiring against their sister. And at the end, it is brutal to listen to, and yet it is one of the most well-known myths

in all of Greek mythology. Yeah, and we're incredibly lucky to the most well-known myths in all of Greek mythology. It was supposed to have been in the Imperial Archive in Moscow, but it was the man who discovered it said he'd found it in a farmhouse and it was being kind of picked over by chickens and pigs. So if nothing else, we should give thanks for the fact that the manuscript was obviously less tasty than chicken food, because otherwise we wouldn't have it at all. And it's just the most beautiful, beautiful story. Some great stories about works from the classical world, I think, are discovered by accident or by chance. Like a talus, I think, as well, discovered in the bush. Farmhouse is a goodie. Farmhouse is another one. But in the midst of that story that you've told there so elegantly, Natalie, it's also testament, isn't it, to that great power of Demeter.

She's resolute. Her wrath, her defiance is so strong. She will not quit. That even Zeus, king of the gods, has to say, okay. Yeah, this far and no further. You know, what do you want kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, they consistently underestimate her. I think because it's easy to underestimate a goddess,

it's easy to underestimate their sister, but they underestimate her as a mother. And that is a huge mistake, I would suggest. That's such a key part of our identity isn't it when she's with persephone everything is lovely you've got the harvest you've got spring and summer but that idea has now gone on to the seasons that when persephone is in the underworld she grieves maybe not famine nowadays but you know nothing is growing in winter and so on because she's beset by grief you know and so there is this real sense of bereavement

and as part of demeter's story that i think is really important and when you look at much later poetic interpretations of this story that's what you see you know when caroline duffy takes it on or evan boland or alicia stallings a Stallings, to give her her poet name, then this is something that we come to, you know, this idea of being frozen cold. And then the defrosting is sort of done to her in Caroline Duffy's version. She doesn't sort of choose to thaw, but the presence of Persephone coming back to her brings the warmth. And so I find it a really interesting story. I find it really, really fascinating that female poets have taken this story on so often. All three of those poets are

mothers of daughters or were mothers of daughters in the case of Boland. So I think it's not an accident that I think it's in the Boland version, she says she can enter the story anywhere. And I think that's really the truth of it, that when you're a teenager, you know, when you're a kid and you first encounter the story, you know, of course you relate to Persephone. And the older you get, I think the easier it is to relate to the sort of idea of a maternal figure consumed with rage. You know, you don't need your own children to feel like a child is being mistreated, I would suggest. So that sense of absolute refusal to accept anything less than what is morally right, I think there's something kind of extraordinary about it. I mean, absolutely there is.

And alongside these later poets, do you also see later artists embracing this topic and portraying this picture of Demeter as wrathful, but very much in mourning and resolute? Yeah, we often see her in mourning you know it's not unusual to see her sort of bent over and weeping and you know have a head veiled because of grief and so on so yeah we do often see her in in this mode of grief and the sort of temptation I think is to show Persephone because she's young and of course that tends to be the rule with art then and now, is that if you want a fun job, then look to surviving Greek vase painting for an

identifier, a certain identified Jocasta, i.e. a woman of the grand old age of 35 or so. That'll give you a shiny coin. But of course, we get lots and lots of very young girls and women but we don't see very many women as old as 30 or so and so I think it's interesting that Demeter kind of breaks that mold we see lots and lots of images of Demeter in her role as mother where she's alongside Persephone and you know often as well with people like Tryptolemus so kings who help with the Eleusinian mistress, to whom she reveals the Eleusinian mistress. So she tends to be shown with Persephone rather than without her in our ancient sources, which is really lovely.

It's quite hard to be sure, often of identities of characters, but generally when we see an older woman and a younger one, I think we tend to assume they're Demeter and Persephone. We've really highlighted how the multi-faceted nature of the goddess demeter but at the end of the day you mentioned their mother goddess do you think demeter still comes down to us today as this almost archetypal mother goddess of the ancient world yeah maybe although there's a sort of squishing of her i

think into a sort of notion of mother earth which as i say is not it's not quite accurate gaia is his mother earth and not always very maternal although i suppose it depends what kind of mother you had you had the kind of mother who thinks that she'd bear for slightly fewer children exactly exactly as maternal as you're expecting but yeah i think we've tended to we've tended to make demeter a little bit i don't know boring and in our ancient sources she's just a lot tougher a lot more relentless than that you know we're lucky and delighted when we get a harvest but shouldn't we also be i often find myself thinking that women who are sort of female characters who are seen by people as you know sort of terrible wives like cliton nestra or terrifying sisters like demeter in this instance

are actually just really good mothers of daughters and people don't know what to do with that, because why would anyone care about a daughter when it's only sons that matter? And it's like, yeah, I know. Imagine that in a patriarchy, being prepared to go to the wall for a daughter. But there she is. There she is indeed. And I love that idea that, you know, the wrath of Demeter, it's so ferocious that it terrifies even the king of the gods. Exactly. And it's really nice. As you say, I think sometimes you're right too, that the name Demeter, it's so ferocious that it terrifies even the king of the gods. Exactly. And it's really nice. As you say, I think sometimes you're right too, that the name Demeter,

compared to all the other gods and goddesses of the Pantheon, whether that may be Athena or Aphrodite or even Hephaestus or Ares, might be seen as a bit more boring. But as you've highlighted there. Yeah, she's not soft at all. Exactly. It's just bringing that to the fore. So it must be such a pleasure to highlight that in your new book. It was. It was a joy. Yeah, she's not soft at all. Exactly. It's just bringing that to the fore. So it must be such a pleasure to get to highlight that in your new book.

It was. It was a joy. Yeah, it was a real joy. And I've got a friend who thinks that the Homeric hymn to Demeter is both the greatest of the Homeric hymns, which I don't think many people would dispute really, but also that actually it sets a model

for later Greek writing where they're sort of, we call it the Greek novel. And there's another conversation to be had on what constitutes novel, but long form fiction anyway. And they tend to be romantic. They tend to be romances. But here the romance isn't, of course, between Persephone and Hades. How could it be when it's trafficking and forced marriage? It's the love affair essentially of a mother and her daughter that when they're together, they're happy and everything is beautiful. And when they're separated, it's the end of the world so

the tropes that will be used later of romantic lovers being separated are used here of the relationship between a mother who adores her daughter beyond the price of every other person on earth and a daughter who needs her mother to love her in that way because otherwise she would be lost forever in the underworld well nashley this has been absolutely brilliant is there anything else you'd love to mention about Demeter before we completely wrap up? Oh, I think those are probably my favourite stories, but there is a really gorgeous statue of her in the British Museum.

And so I'm going to give everyone voluntary homework if they would like to. You can go and look for this statue. And it's Demeter and she's seated. And she's lost a lot. I mean, this isn't a statue that's had a particularly easy life. So her forearms have been broken off. And I mean, quite a lot of her is gone, truthfully. The arms of the seat that she's sitting on, it looks like the stool that Ambe gives her, but it was probably

a bit smarter than that at some point. And it's really easy if you look at her from the front to see her as this sort of serene, seated goddess very kind of still mother figure it's like yeah fine go sideways on and look at her feet and you'll see they're on a sort of footstool and one of them is pushing out beyond the footstool even though it's all broken you can just see it as though she's about to rise and that is how i think you should think of demeter if she's sitting she's getting ready to stand because you might mess with her daughter and she's just not going to let that happen absolutely not well Natalie as mentioned this has been absolutely brilliant last but certainly not least you've written a new book all about these various goddesses including Demeter which is called Divine Might Goddesses in Greek Myth

well there you go Natalie thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast anytime back on the podcast. Anytime. Well, there you go. There was Natalie Haynes talking all the things to meet her and how this ancient Greek goddess was so much more than just the goddess of harvest. Sometimes she gets this reputation as being quite boring compared to the likes of Poseidon or Hades. But actually, boring compared to the likes of Poseidon or Hades but actually when you explore the stories associated with her in more detail such as how she reacts to Hades's abduction of Persephone well actually she is certainly one of the most extraordinary deities in the whole pantheon. But I do hope you've enjoyed the episode, Nathalie was a fantastic guest and stay tuned for early 2024 when we will continue this special Greek Gods and Goddesses series.

The scriptwriter for this episode for The Myth was Andrew Hulse. The narrator was Nicola Woolley. The producer was Elena Guthrie. The assistant producer was Annie Colo. And the episode was mixed. A joint team today of Annie Colo and Aidan Lonergan thank you to you all for making this episode a reality last things from me if you are listening on Spotify make sure to click the follow button so you don't miss out on an episode when we

drop them twice every week if you're listening listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure to subscribe. And if you'd be kind enough also to leave us either a rating or a comment, let us know your thoughts as we continue to grow, to get bigger, to get better. We've got very exciting plans for 2024. So stay tuned. This is the best part of my job, full stop. And it is such a pleasure to be able to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible every week.

But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.