called, had done it, the act having been
really committed by others, according to his orders. As those who
carried her off concealed themselves in the caverns of Mount AEtna,
awaiting their opportunity to escape, it was afterwards fabled that
Pluto came out of the Infernal Regions at that place; as that
mountain, from its nature, was always deemed one of the outlets of
Hell. Upon this, Ceres went to Greece, in search of her daughter; and,
resting at Eleusis, in Attica, she heard that the ship in which her
daughter was carried away had sailed westward. On this, she complained
to Jupiter, one of the Titan kings, but could obtain no further
satisfaction than that her daughter should be permitted to visit her
occasionally, whereby, at length, her grief was mitigated.

Banier does not agree with these suggestions of Pezeron and Le Clerc,
and thinks that Ceres is no other personage than the Isis of the
Egyptians, supposing that the story is founded on the following
circumstance:--Greece, he says, was afflicted with famine in the
reign of Erectheus, who was obliged to send to Egypt for corn, when
those who went for it brought back the worship of the Deity who
presided over agriculture. The evils which the Athenians had suffered
by the famine, and the dread of again incurring the same calamity,
made them willingly embrace the rites of a Goddess whom they believed
able to protect them from it. Triptolemus established her worship in
Eleusis, and there instituted the mysteries which he had brought over
from Egypt. These had been previously introduced into Sicily, which
was the reason why it was said that Ceres came from Sicily to Athens.
Her daughter was said to have been taken away, because corn and fruit
had not been produced in sufficient quantities, for some time, to
furnish food for the people. Pluto was said to have carried her to the
Infernal regions, because the grain and seeds at that time remained
buried, as it were, at the very center of the earth. Jupiter was said
to have decided the difference between Ceres and Pluto, because the
earth again became covered with crops.

This appears to be an ingenious allegorical explanation of the story;
but it is not at all improbable that it may have been founded upon
actual facts, and that, having lost her daughter, and going to Attica
to seek her, Ceres taught Triptolemus the mysteries of Isis; and that,
in