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It would be superfluous to point out the numerous details of this legend which accord explicitly with the account of the rape of Persephone in the Homeric hymn. The interspersion of Christian ideas and reminiscences of Turkish domination and stories of fabulous monsters may strike oddly on the ear unacquainted with the vagaries of Greek folk-stories. Yet the most sceptical could not doubt that the tradition which forms the groundwork of the legend is none other than the old myth, or that the four chief actors in the drama are none other than Demeter and Core, Pluto and Triptolemus. Pluto, masked as a Turkish agha, is perhaps the least readily recognisable; yet in one way as a relic of ancient tradition the part he plays is the most remarkable in the whole legend. It is to Souli in Epirus that he carries off the maiden. Now this is the district of the ancient Cocytus and Acheron; here was one of the descents to the lower world; here Aidoneus held sway; and here, in one version of the myth[148], was laid the scene of the rape of Persephone by that god. Hence the claims of two separate localities to the same mythological distinction seem by some means to have become incorporated in the single modern legend.

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