Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 246, lines 46 sqq.; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, No. 609. See above, p. 61. The identification lies all the nearer to hand because the inscription records a decree in honour of a man who had sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone at the Great Eleusinian Games, and a provision is contained in the decree that the honour should be proclaimed “at the Ancestral Contest of the Festival of the Threshing-floor.” The same Ancestral Contest at the Festival of the Threshing-floor is mentioned in another Eleusinian inscription, which records honours decreed to a man who had sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone at the Festival of the Threshing-floor. See Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, 1884, coll. 135 sq.
Diodorus Siculus, v. 68; Arrian, Indic. 7; Lucian, Somnium, 15; id., Philopseudes, 3; Plato, Laws, vi. 22, p. 782; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, p. 53, ed. C. Lang; Pausanias, i. 14. 2, vii. 18. 2, viii. 4. 1; Aristides, Eleusin. vol. i. pp. 416 sq., ed. G. Dindorf; Hyginus, Fabulae, 147, 259, 277; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 549 sqq.; id., Metamorph. v. 645 sqq.; Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 19. See also above, p. 54. As to Triptolemus, see L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone (Hamburg, 1837), pp. 282 sqq.; id., Griechische Mythologie,4 i. 769 sqq.
255
C. Strube, Studien über den Bilderkreis von Eleusis (Leipsic, 1870), pp. 4 sqq.; J. Overbeck, Griechische Kunstmythologie, iii. (Leipsic, 1873-1880), pp. 530 sqq.; A. Baumeister, Denkmäler des classischen Altertums, iii. 1855 sqq. That Triptolemus sowed the earth with corn from his car is mentioned by Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 2; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28, pp. 53 sq., ed. C. Lang; Hyginus, Fabulae, 147; and Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 19.
256
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 20, lines 37 sqq.; E. S. Roberts and E. A. Gardner, Introduction to Greek Epigraphy, ii. (Cambridge, 1905), No. 9, p. 24.
257
Arrian, Epicteti Dissertationes, i. 4. 30.
258
Scholiast on Homer, Iliad, xviii. 483; L. Preller, Demeter und Persephone, p. 286; F. A. Paley on Hesiod, Works and Days, 460. The custom of ploughing the land thrice is alluded to by Homer (Iliad, xviii. 542, Odyssey, v. 127) and Hesiod (Theogony, 971), and is expressly mentioned by Theophrastus (Historia Plantarum, vii. 13. 6).
259
So I am informed by my learned friend the Rev. Professor J. H. Moulton.
260
J. Toepffer, Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889), pp. 138 sq. However, the Eleusinian Torchbearer Callias apparently claimed to be descended from Triptolemus, for in a speech addressed to the Lacedaemonians he is said by Xenophon (Hellenica, vi. 3. 6) to have spoken of Triptolemus as “our ancestor” (ὁ ἡμέτερος πρόγονος). See above, p. 54. But it is possible that Callias was here speaking, not as a direct descendant of Triptolemus, but merely as an Athenian, who naturally ranked Triptolemus among the most illustrious of the ancestral heroes of his people. Even if he intended to claim actual descent from the hero, this would prove nothing as to the historical character of Triptolemus, for many Greek families boasted of being descended from gods.
261
The prize of barley is mentioned by the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150. The Scholiast on Aristides (vol. iii. pp. 55, 56, ed. G. Dindorf) mentions ears of corn as the prize without specifying the kind of corn. In the official Athenian inscription of 329 b. c., though the amount of corn distributed in prizes both at the quadriennial and at the biennial games is stated, we are not told whether the corn was barley or wheat. See Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 259 sqq. According to Aristides (Eleusin. vol. i. p. 417, ed. G. Dindorf, compare p. 168) the prize consisted of the corn which had first appeared at Eleusis.
262
Marmor Parium, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, i. 544. That the Rarian plain was the first to be sown and the first to bear crops is affirmed by Pausanias (i. 38. 6).
263
Pausanias, i. 38. 6.
264
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 587, lines 119 sq. In the same inscription, a few lines lower down, mention is made of two pigs which were used in purifying the sanctuary at Eleusis. On the pig in Greek purificatory rites, see my notes on Pausanias, ii. 31. 8 and v. 16. 8.
265
See below, pp. 140sqq., 155sqq., 164sqq., compare 218sqq.
Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. ix. 150, p. 228, ed. Aug. Boeckh.
273
The games are assigned to Metageitnion by P. Stengel (Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. coll. 2331 sq.) and to Boedromion by August Mommsen and W. Dittenberger. The last-mentioned scholar supposes that the games immediately followed the Mysteries, and August Mommsen formerly thought so too, but he afterwards changed his view and preferred to suppose that the games preceded the Mysteries. See Aug. Mommsen, Heortologie (Leipsic, 1864), p. 263; id., Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 182 sqq.; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 587, note 171 (vol. ii. pp. 313 sq.). The dating of the games in Metageitnion or in the early part of Boedromion depends on little more than a series of conjectures, particularly the conjectural restoration of an inscription and the conjectural dating of a certain sacrifice to Democracy.
274
A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (London, 1884), pp. 354 sq., 367 sqq.; R. Munro, The Lake-dwellings of Europe (London, Paris, and Melbourne, 1890), pp. 497 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901), pp. 8 sqq.; id., Sprachvergleichung
