The “Plantheon” j 189189 189
The myth of Demeter and Persephone resonated with the Greeks on multiple levels. The
most widely cited benefit to initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries was the hope for a better
fate in the afterlife. In Greek mythology, the dead initially went to the Underworld, a dark,
misty place ruled by Hades. An elect few, the heroic and virtuous, could be rewarded by
being sent to a paradise called Elysium, located at the “margins” of the world. Those who
were judged to have committed crimes against the gods were sent to Tartarus, the Greek ver-
sion of hell, a place of fire and brimstone. The afterlife for the vast majority of ordinary peo-
ple, however, consisted of milling about disconsolately in the crowded, gloomy Underworld
of Hades, yearning for their former lives on the surface. The Eleusinian Mysteries promised
mitigation of this fate— an upgrade, if you will, from coach to first class.
According to later myths associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries, it was Demeter’s and
Persephone’s protégé Triptolemos who judged the dead and decided their fate in the after-
life. Successful completion of the training and initiation rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries
all but guaranteed a positive verdict from Triptolemos. As noted by Sophocles in a frag-
ment from his play, Triptolemos: “Thrice blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites
and thus enter into Hades: for them alone there is life, for the others, all is misery.”^16 In a
sense, the salvation conferred by Triptolemos in the Underworld was a mirror image of his
role in spreading grain cultivation, which, according to Greek belief, rescued them from a
bestial state.Aphrodite’s Garden, Artemis’s Garland
Aphrodite, the goddess of love, is also strongly associated with flowers. In a fragment from
the Cypriot Epics, the seventh- century bce epic poet Stasinos described the floral decora-
tions on Aphrodite’s garments:She clothed herself with garments which the Graces and Hours had made for her and
dyed in flowers of spring— such flowers as the Seasons wear— in crocus and hyacinth
and flourishing violet and the rose’s lovely bloom, so sweet and delicious, and heavenly
buds, the flowers of the narcissus and lily. In such perfumed garments is Aphrodite
clothed at all seasons. Then laughter- loving Aphrodite and her hand- maidens wove
sweet- smelling crowns of flowers of the earth and put them upon their heads— the
bright- coiffed goddesses, the Nymphs and Graces, and golden Aphrodite too, while
they sang sweetly on the mount of many- fountained Ida.^17The flowers associated with Aphrodite’s garments and crown— so “lovely,” “sweet,” “deli-
cious,” and “heavenly”— are clearly metaphors for female beauty and attractiveness and are
thus the appropriate sartorial expression for human love in “all seasons.”
Aphrodite had her own temple in Athens, Aphrodite in the Garden, which under-
scores the goddess’s association with flowers and trees. In midsummer, the temple was
the site of the festival of Arrephoria, which, according to Bruce Thornton, was “a ritual
connected both with the olive tree, one of the most important crops for the ancient
Greeks, and with the initiation of girl- citizens, called ‘dew- carriers,’ into puberty.”^18
The ritual involved the bearing of secret objects between the temple of Athena on
the Acropolis to the nearby temple of Aphrodite in the Garden via an underground