To the modern mind it is surprising to find the processes of agriculture conducted in the main by women, and mirroring themselves in the figures of women-goddesses. But in days when man was mainly concerned with hunting and fighting it was natural enough that agriculture and the ritual attendant on it should fall to the women. Moreover to this social necessity was added, and still is among many savage communities, a deep-seated element of superstition. ‘Primitive man,’ Mr Payne[714] observes, ‘refuses to interfere in agriculture; he thinks it magically dependent for success on woman, and connected with child-bearing.’ ‘When the women plant maize,’ said the Indian to Gumilla, ‘the stalk produces two or three ears. Why? Because women know how to produce children. They only know how to plant corn to ensure its germinating. Then let them plant it, they know more than we know.’ Such seems to have been the mind of the men of Athens who sent their wives and daughters to keep the Thesmophoria and work their charms and ensure fertility for crops and man. It was mainly in connection with agriculture, it would seem, that the Earth-goddess developed her double form as Mother and Maid. The ancient ‘Lady of the Wild Things’ is both in one or perhaps not consciously either, but at Eleusis the two figures are clearly outlined; Demeter and Kore are two persons though one god. They take shape very charmingly in the design in fig. 66, from an early red-figured skyphos[715], found at Eleusis. To the left Demeter stands, holding in her left hand her sceptre, while with her right she gives the corn-ears to her nursling, Triptolemos, who holds his ‘crooked plough.’ Behind is Kore, the maiden, with her simple chiton for dress, and her long flowing hair, and the torches she holds as Queen of the underworld. Mother and Maid in this picture are clearly distinguished, but not infrequently, when both appear together, it is impossible to say which is which. [Illustration: FIG. 66.] * * * * * The relation of these early matriarchal, husbandless goddesses, whether Mother or Maid, to the male figures that accompany them is one altogether noble and womanly, though perhaps not what the modern mind holds to be feminine. It seems to halt somewhere half-way between Mother and Lover, with a touch of the patron saint. Aloof from achievement themselves, they choose a local hero for their own to inspire and protect. They ask of him, not that he should love or adore, but that he should do great deeds. Hera has Jason, Athene Perseus, Herakles and Theseus, Demeter and Kore Triptolemos. And as their glory is in the hero’s high deeds, so their grace is his guerdon. With the coming of patriarchal conditions this high companionship ends. The women goddesses are sequestered to a servile domesticity, they become abject and amorous.