292 pfaat "bore, kegel^t)/, ani. "bLjncy, 



poisoneth the body." Coriander is held to be under the plane- 

 tary influence of Saturn. 



CORN. — The generic name of Corn, which is applied to all 

 kinds of grain, is one of several words, which being common to the 

 widely-separated branches of the Indo-European race, prove the 

 pracftice of tillage among our ancestors before they left their first 



home in Central Asia. The Greeks worshipped Demeter, and 



the Romans Ceres, as the goddess of Corn, and she is supposed to 

 have been the same deity as Rhea and Tellus, and the Cybele, 

 Bona Dea, Berecynthia of the Phrygians, the Isis of the Egyptians, 

 Atergates of the Syrians, and the Hera of the Arcadians. Ceres 

 was generally represented as a beautiful woman, with a garland of 

 ears of Corn on her head, a wheatsheaf by her side, and the cornu- 

 copia, or horn of plenty, in her hand. To commemorate the abduc- 

 tion of her daughter Proserpine by Pluto, a festival was held 

 about the beginning of harvest, and another festival, lasting six 

 days, was held in remembrance of the goddess's search for her 

 daughter, at the time that Corn is sown in the earth. During the 

 quest for Proserpine, the earth was left untilled and became barren ; 

 but upon the return of Ceres, she instrudted Triptolemus of Eleusis 

 in all the arts appertaining to agriculture and the cultivation of 

 Corn, and gave him her chariot, drawn by two dragons, wherein 

 he might travel over the whole earth and distribute Corn to all its 

 inhabitants. On his return to Eleusis, Triptolemus restored the 

 chariot to Ceres, and established the famed Eleusinian festivals and 

 mysteries in her honour. This festival, observed every fourth year, 

 and dedicated to Demeter (Ceres) and Proserpine, was the most 

 solemn of all the sacred feasts of Greece, and was so religiously 

 observed, that anyone revealing its secret mysteries, or improperly 

 taking part in the ceremonials, was put to an ignominious death. 

 During the festival, the votaries walked in a solemn procession, in 

 which the holy basket of Ceres was carried about in a consecrated 

 cart, the people on all sides shouting Hail, Demeter! In their sa- 

 crifices, the ancients usually offered Ceres a pregnant sow, as that 

 animal often destroys the Corn and other crops. While the Corn 

 was yet in grass they offered her a ram, after the victim had been 



thrice led round the fields. Among the Romans, twelve priests 



named Arvales, supposed to have been descended from the nurse of 

 Romulus, celebrated in April and July the festivals called Ambar- 

 valia. These priests, who wore crowns composed of ears of Corn, 

 conducfted processions round the ploughed fields in honour of Ceres, 

 and offered as sacrifices at her shrine a sow, a sheep, and a bull. The 

 rites of the Arvales were founded specially on the worship of Corn. 



^It is believed that among the Greeks, the story of Proserpine 



brought back from the infernal regions by her mother Ceres, and 

 finally adjudged to pass six months on earth, and six months in 

 Hades, symbolises Corn as the seed of Wheat, and its condition 

 during Winter and Summer. De Gubernatis considers that the 



