Triptolemos

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Triptolemos between Demeter (left), who gives him ears of wheat, and Persephone (right), who blesses him (votive relief from Eleusis, approx. 440-430 BC, NAMA )
Triptolemos and Kore on a red-figure bowl

Triptolemos ( Greek  Τριπτόλεμος ) is in Greek mythology the propagator of agriculture and culture in general and the central hero of the Eleusinian mysteries .

myth

In the Homeric Hymnos , the oldest source, Triptolemos is one of the lords of Eleusis, next to Keleos , the king of Eleusis, who were first introduced to the mysteries by Demeter. Accordingly, he was originally depicted as a bearded, adult man, standing on a chariot adorned with a wreath and a bundle of ears of corn.

Later he becomes a youth, as on the famous votive tablet from Eleusis. His genealogy is very uncertain. Pausanias says that according to the people of Argos , Eubuleus and Triptolemus were sons of Trochilus . After Musaios but be Triptolemos a son of Ge and Okeanos , according to Orphics back together with Eubuleus sons of Dysaules , the husband of Baubo . According to an Athenian poet, however, Triptolemus is a brother of Kerkyon , his mother is a daughter of Amphiktyon and his father is Raros , son of Kranaos . And at this point Pausanias breaks off with the remark that he would have wanted to write more, but in a dream he had received a warning and therefore he would rather write about things that anyone can read. Finally, Hyginus mentions Eleusinos and Kothonea as the parents of Triptolemus .

The Eleusinian form of the myth is in the Fasti of Ovid as part of the story of the rape of Persephone played: Here is Triptolemos, son of Keleos and Metaneira , first the sickly child of the old Keleos. He finds Demeter, exhausted from the search for her stolen daughter, sitting mourning by the roadside in the form of an old woman. He takes her in with pity. When they arrive at the hut of Keleos, everyone is in mourning, as no one believes in the boy's rescue any longer. But when the goddess kisses him compassionately, he returns to life and is noticeably better. Later, in the middle of the night, Demeter takes him on his lap, speaks three secret sayings about him and then covers him with embers from the hearth to burn everything mortal out of him and thus make him immortal. Metaneira wakes up, screams and pulls the child out of the embers. To this the goddess speaks:

You have sinned unintentionally: the fear of the mother avoids the gift and the boy falls prey to death, but first he will plow and sow and reap.

Therefore Triptolemos is of Demeter with ears endowed, in agriculture trained and sent forth the people's grain production to teach. He drove all over the world in a wagon hitched with kites and scattered corn seeds. After his return to Eleusis, Keleos wanted to have him killed, but had to let him rule on the orders of Demeter. As King of Eleusis, Triptolemus then founded the thesmophoria .

In connection with the chariot drawn by dragons, which corresponds to the chariot of Demeter, Pausanias also relates that when Triptolemus stayed with Eumelos of Patrai while he was sleeping, Antheias, the son of Eumelus, got into the chariot and tried to sow the seeds himself . But he fell down and was killed, similar to Phaeton , who fell from the sun god's chariot and perished. In his memory, Triptolemus and Eumelos founded the city of Antheia .

Twice it was told that one tried to play badly with the bearer of the gift of Demeter: Hyginus reported that Charnabon , king of the Thracian Geten , had stalked him and killed one of the two dragons, Demeter sent the Charnabon to heaven as a punishment together with the killed dragon , where he appears as the constellation of the serpent bearer (Ophiuchus). And with Ovid, King Lynkeus tries to stab Triptolemus in his sleep, for which he is transformed into a lynx by Demeter .

In Plato ( Apology , 41a), Triptolemus, as a demigod, is one of the judges of the dead.

The Eleusinian ruler Krokon is known as the son of Triptolemus .

cult

Triptolemus was especially venerated in Athens and Eleusis . According to Pausanias, there were two temples in Athens above the source of Peisistratos, one dedicated to Demeter and Kore and a temple to Triptolemus with a cult image. In Eleusis there was also a temple of Triptolemos and on the Rarion pedion , the "field of Raros ", where the holy grain of Demeter was sown for the first time, there is a threshing floor and an altar of Triptolemos.

iconography

Exit of the Triptolemos (Triptolemos painter, Louvre, Paris)

In classical times, Triptolemos was mainly depicted on red-figure ceramics , mostly as a boy, sitting on the dragon carriage, with a kore or Demeter, for example on the eponymous stamnos of the Triptolemos painter ( Louvre , G 187). The car is shown as having wings. A vehicle drawn by snakes or dragons only appears in the post-antique images.

The most important depiction is Triptolemus as a naked boy between Demeter and Kore on the large relief of Eleusis, probably a work from the Phidias circle, today in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. However, it is not uncontested whether Triptolemos is actually represented here.

In post-antique times there are hardly any representations, apart from the illustrations of the transformation of the treacherous king Lynkeus into a lynx from the Metamorphoses of Ovid and other works inspired by this Ovid episode.

swell

literature

Web links

Commons : Triptolemos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pausanias 1, 14, 2.
  2. ↑ Fasti 4, 457-460: cui dea 'dum non es,' dixit 'scelerata fuisti: / inrita materno sunt mea dona metu. / iste quidem mortalis erit: sed primus arabit / et seret et culta praemia tollet humo. '
  3. ↑ According to Ovid, the goddess Triptolemus gives her dragon chariot.
  4. ↑ Pausanias 7:18 , 2.
  5. ^ Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Krokon . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, column 1449 f. ( Digitized version ).
  6. ^ Pausanias 1, 14, 2 and 1, 38, 6.
  7. ↑ Klaus Junker / Sabrina Strohwald, Gods as Inventors. The Origin of Culture in Greek Art. Darmstadt / Mainz 2012, p. 25