hen comes before us the great mystical and maternal deity of Greece, DEMETER of the Eleusinian mysteries, the Roman Ceres. Her very name signifies "mother," probably gêj mêtêr Mother Earth. Euripides says, in his Bacchanals, that the Greeks honor chiefly two deities, -- one being Demeter (who is the Earth, he says, if you prefer to call her so), and the other the son of Semele. Demeter is, like Hera, both sister and in a manner wife of Zeus, to bring her into equality with him. Yet she is a virgin, even when she bears a child, Persephone or Proserpine. In a sense this maiden is the child of Zeus, but not in a mortal manner, "by an ineffable conception," [1] says the Orphic Hymn.

All Demeter's existence is concentrated on this motherhood. She feeds the human race, but when she is deprived of her daughter, she stops the course of the seasons for one year, till the beloved be restored. Nor is there for a time any change even after her daughter's return, until Zeus sends Demeter's own mother to persuade her, thus controlling the might of motherhood by motherhood alone. She thus goes through, suffering to glory, and Grote well names her the Mater Dolorosa of Greece.

As this reverence of Demeter for her own mother carries the sacredness of maternity a generation further back, so it is carried a generation further forward by the refusal of Persephone to return permanently to the upper world. Having eaten pomegranate seeds, the legend says, she will go back to her husband. But the pomegranate is the symbol of the felicities of marriage, and its promise of offspring. Thus on every side it is maternity which is canonized in the myth of Demeter, and the concentration on this of every quality of her nature makes her stand the immortal representative of woman as mother. This is the central symbol of the Eleusinian mysteries, ranking first among the religious ceremonials of Greece. The Mother and Daughter, on Athenian lips, mean always Demeter and Persephone; and through them this relation is glorified, as wifehood becomes sublime in Hera, love in Aphrodite, and maidenhood, active or contemplative, in Artemis and Athena.

But besides these five attitudes of woman as girl, maiden, lover, wife, and mother, there must be finally one which shall comprise, all of these, and may outlast them all. HESTIA, or Vesta, is the sister of Zeus, but not his wife like Hera, nor his symbolical mistress like Demeter; nay, when sought in marriage by Phozbus and Poseidon, she has sworn by the head of Zeus to be a virgin forever. She represents woman as queen of home. Houses are her invention. No separate temple is built to her, for every hearth is her altar; no special sacrifices are offered, for she has the first share of every sacrifice. Every time the household meets before the hearth, she is named, and the meal becomes thereby an act of worship. Every in-door oath must be sworn by her. The worst criminal who enters the house and touches the hearth is sacred for her sake.

On the eighth day of the Greek baby's life comes its baptism before Hestia, not with water but with fire, -- the ceremony of the Amphidromia, when the nurse and all the women of the house bear the little one to the hearth. Laying aside their clothing, -- because this is the intimate domestic ritual, when body and soul are consecrated in their uncovered purity, -- they pass in procession round the central flame, and thenceforth Hestia is the protectress of the child.

And observe how beautifully this sublime protection of the hearth is spread yet further. As the city itself is but an extended family, so the city also has its sacred hearth, where the public fire is kept burning, and the public suppliants come. The fugitive entering the town comes here for safety, and is unmolested. Foreign ambassadors are here met and greeted by the magistrates. If a colony goes forth, the emigrants take coals from the public hearth of the town they leave. Hestia's fire must never go out; if it does, it must only be rekindled from the sun.

Thus in Greece, as in Rome afterwards, the vestal virgins guard the central sacredness of the state. Hence the fearful penalty on their misdeeds, and the vast powers they hold. So incarnated in them is the power of the hearth that they bear it with them, and if they meet a criminal, he must be set free. I know no symbol of the power of a sublime womanhood like that, -- the assumption that vice cannot live in its presence, but is transformed to virtue. Could any woman once be lifted to a realizing sense of power like that, she might willingly accept the accompanying penalty of transgression. She never would transgress.

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[1] [Gk. transliteration:] Arrêtois gonais, Hymn XXIX. 7.