Flora Unveiled

190 i Flora Unveiled

passageway, evoking fertility and the Underworld. After depositing their burdens at the
temple of Aphrodite, the girls returned to the Temple of Athena, carrying some equally
mysterious items. According to Thornton, the function of the ritual was to “harness the
fecundating power of Aphrodite so that the olive and the Athenian people alike, espe-
cially its girls, were fruitful and multiplied.”^19
The goddess Artemis was a Near Eastern import and was referred to as the “Mistress of
Animals” in the Iliad. In Archaic Art, she was often depicted as a huntress who “trium-
phantly slays her prey with bow and arrow.”^20 Beginning with Homer, however, Artemis’s
Near Eastern fierceness was attenuated, and she came to be represented as an adolescent girl
associated with female virginity.^21 In Euripedes’s Hippolytus, the hunter Hippolytus gains
partial access to the elusive goddess by presenting her with a garland of flowers plucked from
“an inviolate meadow.”

For you, lady, I  bring this plaited garland I  have made, gathered from an inviolate

meadow, a place where the shepherd does not dare to pasture his flocks, where the

iron scythe has never come: no, it is inviolate, and the bee makes its way through it in

the spring- time. Shamefaced Awe tends this garden with streams of river- water, for

those to pluck who have acquired nothing by teaching but rather in whose very nature

chastity in all things has ever won its place: the base may not pluck.^22

By associating her with the purity and chastity of flowers, Euripedes symbolically associ-
ates Artemis with these ideal feminine qualities.

Minor Female Vegetation Deities of Ancient Greece

Flowers were important attributes of Aphrodite, but Demeter and Persephone were by
far the most important vegetation/ agricultural goddesses of ancient Greece. Locally, they
were sometimes worshipped by emphasizing different aspects. For example, Demeter Chloe
(Demeter of Green Shoots), Demeter Chthonia (Underground Demeter), Demeter Anesidora
(Demeter Who Provides Gifts from the Earth), and Demeter Malophoros (Demeter the
Apple Bearer) emphasize four different attributes of the goddess. Greek mythology also
included many lesser vegetation goddesses, consistent with a strong identification of plants
with women.
Chloris, from the Greek word for pale green or greenish yellow, was a nymph associ-
ated with spring flowers, whom the Romans renamed Flora. Like Persephone, Chloris was
abducted and then later married to her abductor. But instead of being abducted by Hades,
Chloris was captured by Zephyrus, the West Wind. It was Zephyrus who gave Chloris
dominion over spring, and together they had a son, Carpus (“fruit”). It is tempting to read
into this marriage between flowers and wind a metaphor for wind as a “fertilizing” (polli-
nating) agent, which causes Chloris to produce fruit. Cereal crops, so central to Greek agri-
culture, are all wind- pollinated, but if wind pollination is being referred to, a more likely
source for the idea is the date palm, as the role of wind in date palm pollination was well-
known in the Near East. However, there is no direct evidence that the Greeks imagined
that Zephyrus’s role in fertilizing Chloris had anything to do with pollination. Instead,
Zephyrus was likely associated with rain, which encourages the fruit to grow.