I may, then, observe, in conclusion, that the whole of this hypothesis is eminently agreeable to the Homeric representation of Ceres in its four main branches, (1) as Pelasgian, (2) as subject to lustful passion, (3) as a secondary wife of Jupiter, and (4) as immediately associated with productive Earth.
Although the Persephone of Homer is rarely brought before us, and our information respecting her is therefore slight, there seems to be sufficient ground for asserting that she is not the mere female reflection of Hades or Aidoneus.
It is only for those deities from whom other deities are drawn by descent, that we find in Homer a regular conjugal connection provided. Thus Neptune, as we have seen, cannot be said to have a wife in Homer. Amphitrite appears in the poems with a faint and indeed altogether doubtful personality, though she afterwards grew into his spouse. Now Neptune was a deity much more in view than Aides: and it is not likely that we should have found Persephone more fully developed than Amphitrite, had she not represented some older and more independent tradition.
Again, in cases where the female deity is the mere reflection of the male, we do not find her invested with a share in his dominion, although, as in the case of Juno, she may occasionally and derivatively exercise some of the prerogatives, which in him have a higher and more unquestionable activity. Thus Tartarus is the region of Κρόνος, not of Ῥέα; air is the realm of Jupiter, not of Jupiter and Juno. But Persephone appears by the side of Hades as a substantive person; she is invoked with him by Althea to slay Meleager, in the Legend of the Ninth Iliad[405]: and the region in which she dwells is not less hers than his[406],
εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους καὶ ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης.
Indeed her personality is the better developed of the two: for no personal act is ascribed in the poems to Aides, except the indeterminate one of trembling, at the battle of the gods, lest the crust of earth should be broken through: and the name given him in the Iliad of Ζεὺς καταχθόνιος, subterranean Jupiter, may possibly suggest that he was sometimes viewed as hardly more than a form or function of the highest god: whereas, in the under-world of the Eleventh Odyssey, all the active functions of sovereignty are placed in her hands. It is she who gathers the women-shades for Ulysses: and it is she who disperses them when they have been passed in review. It is by her that Ulysses apprehends the head of Gorgo may be sent forth to drive him off, should he linger too long; it is by her that he apprehends he may have been deluded with an εἴδωλον or shade, instead of a substance; most of all, it is she who endows Tiresias, alone among the dead, with the character of the Seer[407]. In fine, the whole of the active duties of the nether kingdom appear to be in her hands.