Woman with torches and swans

Sometimes I wonder...

This is a Boeotian (5th-4th c BC) red-figure bell-krater. Athens, National Archaeological Museum. Depicting a woman holding two torches and a swan...The identity of the woman and the overall meaning of the scene "unknown"...

The discussion about these craters can be found in the paper entitled "Swan Riddles in Boeotian Red-figure Vase Painting" by Chrstina Avronidaki.

Is it possible that this woman is Demeter who "carried a pair of flaming torches in her search for her daughter Persephone".

Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to the land of the dead. During her search, grief stricken Demeter, mourning the disappearance (death) of her daughter, forbade plants to grow...

This is normally interpreted as winter, the darkest part of the year (torches) when nature is dormant (no plants grow)...It is during the winter that whooper swans migrate to Greece from Northern Europe. 

I talked about this in my post "The young one"...

But are these swans depicted on the craters whooper swans which are migratory, or mute swans which are resident birds in Greece? In "Swan Riddles in Boeotian Red-figure Vase Painting", Chrstina Avronidak says: "Although the swans represented on the Boeotian red-figure examples appear to belong to the Mute Swan species, ancient writers did not differentiate between Mutes and Whoopers, which were and still are to be found in Greece...". This is based on "...Their S-shaped neck curve and bulging bill base are characte-ristic of the species. For the main differences between the Mute (Cygnus olor) and the Whooper Swan (Cygnus cygnus)..."

I am not so sure that we can definitely say which swan species is depicted on these Ancient Greek vessels. Here are both mute and whooper swan side by side. 

Both birds seem to have S-shaped necks, with mute swan admittedly having more curved one. Also Mute swan has a very distinctive large bulge on their beaks while the whooper swan has pretty straight beak...

The swans depicted on these Ancient Greek craters have beaks which are something in between

The fact that Greeks didn't distinguish between different species of swans and believed that "all swans sing when they are dying" leads me to believe that when we are talking about swan symbolism we need to look at whooping swans...

Chrstina Avronidak says that there is a "tentative" proposal that the woman with torches could be Hecate, the Witch who helped Demeter find Persephone...Here we have Persephone (Spring), Demeter (Summer, Autumn) and Hecate (Winter), the three faces of Mother Earth all joined together...

Persephone is Demeter is Hecate...

That the swan on the original crater was a whooping swan used as a symbol o winter, can be seen from this next vessel. Boeotian black-figure calyx-krater. Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum. The torch-bearing woman on this black-figure krater was identified as Demeter. However apparently this is "questionable"...The bird is identified as as Crane...

And here is something interesting I only fund out today. For Ancient Greeks, swallows were the heralds of Spring, as they were the first migrating birds to return from Africa. I talked about this in my article "Herald of spring"... 

But it seems that for the Ancient Greeks cranes were the heralds of winter, because they were the last birds to migrate to Africa...And it is during the winter that Demeter wanders through the dark holding her torches searching for her dead young self... 

I wonder what is the plant the goddess is holding in her hands? 

Olive? Olive harvest starts at the end of autumn beginning of winter...

Grain? Grain sowing starts at the end of autumn beginning of winter...

Both are directly linked to the part of the Persephone story when Demeter searches for her carrying torches...As I explained in my article about the "Abduction of Persephone"...

So I wonder...