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“Kore” by W.K.C. Guthrie
There were two Orphic myths of Kore, the story of her violation by her father Zeus and that of her abduction to the lower world by Pluto. Only the former fits in as a part of the theogony and anthropogony, and the account of the latter has therefore been left out until now. The former is an essential link in the chief and characteristic Orphic creation-myth, and its presence needs no justification. The motive for an Orphic version of the familiar rape of Kore by Pluto is not so clear. It may well have been competition with Eleusis, in the form either of trying to gain a footing in the shrine or of enabling the rival system to compete with the established Attic mysteries on their own ground. It is, moreover, a surprising fact, in view of its obvious Cretan and Anatolian affinities, that in the Orphic religion so far as we can see no important place is given to the Mother or the Virgin goddess, to any figure corresponding in nature to the Ephesian ‘Artemis’ or Kybele. The adoption of the story of Demeter and Kore may be due in part to a realization of this deficiency in the mythical cycle on which the main body of doctrine was founded. We shall see in a moment that the modifications introduced by the Orphics into the Homeric story consist mainly of importations from Anatolian cult.
Kore, whose name means simply the Maiden, is identified in all traditions known to us with Persephone, the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Being the daughter of the fruitful earth, or of the corn-goddess, she probably had a double function in popular imagination, as both Queen of the Dead and herself a goddess of fertility. This would make it easier for the double set of legends to arise of which we shall have to speak. According to the ordinary story, on which the rites at Eleusis were founded, she was carried off by Hades to be his consort among the dead. In the Orphic theogony she is violated by her own father Zeus, by whom she becomes the mother of Dionysos. This union contradicts the usual Greek tradition, and seems therefore to be the characteristic Orphic version, since it hangs together with the whole curious story of the Titans’ crime, and the birth and consequent dual nature of mankind. The Orphic version of the rape of Kore by Pluto, which differed from the Eleusinian in certain significant details, seems at the same time to form a quite separate myth, within the Orphic cycle, from that of her union with Zeus and its consequences. Tradition bears us out in supposing that it was not a part of the theogony, but told in a separate poem. The two need not have been connected by any rigid intellectual bonds, since even in their original forms we need not suppose them to have been the work of the same author or even written for the same community. The Orphic tendency to a mystical syncretism made their coexistence easier. Hades and Dionysos were the same, and was Zeus after all very different? An Orphic Hymn (admittedly from a later age) describes the Eumenides as ‘the pure daughters of Chthonian Zeus and the lovely maiden Persephone’ (O.H. 70.2 f.). Was their father Zeus or Pluto?
All this was puzzling to the Neoplatonists, who hated to leave anything unexplained and expended some of the best of their jargon on it. Thus Proklos says (Theol. Plat. 6.II, p. 370 = O.F. 198): ‘The order of Kore is twofold, the first made manifest in the supramundane sphere, where as we hear she is linked with Zeus, and together with him brings forth the one creator of the divided world (i.e. Dionysos), the second within the world, and this is the Kore who is said to be carried off by Pluto’. Again (O.F. 195): ‘Therefore the theologos says that the two extreme gods (i.e. Zeus, god of the upper world, and Pluto of the lower) create with Kore the first things and the last, but the middle god (i.e. Poseidon, god of the sea) even without her. . . . For this reason they say that Kore is now violated by Zeus, now carried off by Pluto’. At another time it is the contrast between Eleusinian and Orphic that seems to him most curious (O.F. 195): ‘For indeed the word of the theologoi who have handed down to us the holy mysteries at Eleusis says that Kore lives in the first place above, where she stays in her mother’s house, which her mother prepared for her in a remote place removed from the world, and in the second place below, where she rules with Pluto over those of the underworld’. So far we have simply the Eleusinian myth, according to which Kore stayed half the year above ground with her mother, and the other half below with Pluto. ‘From this one would wonder how Kore can be consort of both Zeus and Pluto, of whom according to the myths the one violated the goddess and the other carried her off.’
The proof that the Orphic story of .the rape is in origin an Attic work of the sixth century B.C. has been worked out by L. Malten, together with an analysis of the remains to see in what points they show differences from the Homeric version. His article (Altorphische Demetersage, Arch. Reil. Wiss. 1909, 417 ff.) is convincing, and has found general agreement. The evidence need not therefore be retailed here, but one or two points of especial interest may be mentioned. A long papyrus discovered some thirty years ago (O.F. 49) is sufficiently well preserved to show that it is a version or paraphrase of the rape of Kore which the writer attributes to Orpheus, and to give some idea of its contents. These correspond to the Orphic version told by Clement of Alexandria (O.F. 50, 52), and take the story back to the first century B.C. Using the evidence of the papyrus, Malten shows the chorus in Euripides’ Helena (1301 ff.) to have the Orphic version as its source. The same version is pictorially represented on the altar of Hyakinthos at Amyklai, which is dated by archaeologists at the end of the sixth century. Those are the key positions, but they are supported by a wealth of minor corroborations and by the general evidence for the activity of Orphic writers at Athens in the sixth century, most of which has found its place in this book.
The important differences between the Orphic tale and that in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter are these. In the Homeric version, Persephone was carried off in Sicily. Demeter in her wanderings was told the truth of the rape by the Sun. When she came to Eleusis, it was Keleos, the king of the place, and his wife Metaneira, who entertained her, and their daughter Iambe who by her jesting persuaded the goddess so far to overcome her grief as to refresh herself with the kykeon. The son of the king and queen, whom Demeter nursed, was Demophoon. In the Orphic version the scene of the rape was Eleusis itself. Demeter in her search was entertained by a poor man Dysaules (‘ill-housed’) and his wife Baubo in their humble cottage, and their sons Triptolemos and Eubuleus informed her of the rape, which they had seen themselves while tending their herds. Clement adds to these Eumolpos, the founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, who therefore at some time which we cannot determine was absorbed in this way into the Orphic tale. The feat of making the goddess smile and drink the kykeon was Baubo’s, and the form of amusement which she devised for the purpose was obscene. It is probable that Eubuleus is a later addition to the story, but Triptolemos may well belong to the original sixth century version. (Malten, pp. 440 ff. For Eubuleus cp. pp. 179 f. below.) Malten notes as characteristic the difference in religious tone between Keleos the king and Dysaules the poor man.
From: W.K.C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993, pp. 133-135.