Demeter

Demeter, the daughter of Cronus and Rhea, was the Ancient Greek goddess of grain and agriculture, one of the Twelve Olympians. Her grief over her daughter Persephone – carried off by Hades, and allowed to spend only a third of each year below the earth – is the story the Greeks told to explain why the fields lie bare for part of the year. Demeter and Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most famous secret rites in Ancient Greece.

Demeter’s Role

Demeter's Name

The second part of Demeter’s name (-meter) means “mother”, which fits a goddess who is above all a mother and a nurse; in Plato’s Cratylus Socrates explains that she was called Demeter because, like a mother, she gives the gift of food (Plato, Cratylus 404b). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter also calls her by the shorter name Deo (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 47, 211), and the Iliad pictures “yellow-haired Demeter” herself separating the grain from the chaff on the winnowing floors (Iliad 5.499–501). The Romans identified her with Ceres, the name Ovid uses for her in the Metamorphoses. She lived among the gods on Mount Olympus, but the Hymn shows her spending the year of her grief in her temple at Eleusis (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 92, 302–304).

Demeter's Portrayal and Symbolism

In the Homeric Hymn, Demeter is a dignified, veiled goddess. In her grief she throws a dark-blue cloak over her shoulders and searches the earth with blazing torches in her hands (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 42–48). The poet calls her “rich in splendid fruit” (Hymn to Demeter 4) and the lady who brings the seasons and gives bright gifts (Hymn to Demeter 54, 192). Pausanias describes a statue of Demeter in Arcadia that held a torch in her right hand (Pausanias 8.25.7). Her daughter Persephone, whom the Greeks also called the Maid, is almost always found beside her in the cult at Eleusis.

Demeter's Epithets

The Greeks addressed Demeter by many local names. Pausanias records Demeter Chloe (“Green”) at Athens (Pausanias 1.22.3) and, in Arcadia, Demeter Erinys (“Fury”) and Demeter Lusia (“Bather”), both worshipped at Thelpusa, where she was angry at Poseidon’s pursuit and later bathed in the river Ladon (Pausanias 8.25.4–6). Pausanias also saw sanctuaries of Demeter Thesmophoros (“Lawgiver”) at Megara and Troezen (Pausanias 1.42.6, 2.32.8), and at Drymaea in Phocis the people held a yearly feast for her, the Thesmophoria (Pausanias 10.33.12).

Demeter's Family

Demeter was one of the six children of Cronus and Rhea. Hesiod lists them in the order Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus, which makes Demeter the second child and the middle one of the three sisters (Hesiod, Theogony 453–458). Like her brothers and sisters, except Zeus, she was swallowed by her father Cronus at birth and later brought up again (Hesiod, Theogony 459–497; Apollodorus, Library 1.1.5, 1.2.1).

Demeter’s Consorts: Iasion, Poseidon, and Zeus

Demeter was seldom shown with a male partner. The mortal Iasion and her brothers Poseidon and Zeus are the main exceptions.

Demeter and Iasion

In the Odyssey, Calypso says that Demeter gave in to her desire and lay with Iasion in a thrice-ploughed fallow field, and that Zeus, learning of it, killed him with a bright thunderbolt (Odyssey 5.125–128). Hesiod adds that the goddess bore a son, Plutus (Ploutos), the giver of wealth, in the rich land of Crete (Theogony 969–974). Diodorus Siculus places the meeting at the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia in Samothrace, where Demeter, in love with Iasion, gave him the fruit of the corn (Diodorus 5.49). Hyginus, following a Cretan historian, gives Iasion and Demeter two sons, Philomelus and Plutus, who quarrelled over their wealth; Philomelus, forced by need, bought two oxen with what he had, built the first wagon and lived by ploughing, and his mother set him among the stars as Bootes (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.4).

Demeter and Poseidon

The Arcadians told a different story at Thelpusa. Demeter, wandering in search of her daughter, was pursued by Poseidon, and she changed herself into a mare to avoid him; he changed into a stallion and lay with her. She bore a daughter, whose real name the Arcadians would not tell the uninitiated, and the horse Arion (Pausanias 8.25.4–7). At Lycosura, also in Arcadia, Pausanias found the goddess called Despoina (“Mistress”), whom the Arcadians worshipped above all other gods as a daughter of Poseidon and Demeter; her real name, too, was kept from the uninitiated (Pausanias 8.37.9).

Demeter and Zeus

Finally, Zeus lay with Demeter. In Hesiod’s list of the wives of Zeus she comes fourth, after Metis, Themis and Eurynome, and she bore him white-armed Persephone, whom Hades carried off (Hesiod, Theogony 886–914). Persephone is the best known of her children.

Demeter and Persephone

The most important myth involving Demeter is told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter: the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades and the goddess’s wanderings.

The Abduction of Persephone

Persephone was playing with the daughters of Oceanus, gathering roses, crocuses, violets, irises, hyacinths and a narcissus that Earth had grown, at Zeus’s wish, to be a lure for the girl. As she reached for the flower the ground opened in the Nysian plain, and Hades, the lord of many guests, burst out with his immortal horses, seized her and drove her away on his golden chariot while she cried out to her father (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 1–32). Her mother heard her cry from far away, but neither gods nor mortals would tell her the truth (Hymn to Demeter 20–46).

Demeter Finds Out

For nine days Demeter wandered over the earth with burning torches, tasting neither ambrosia nor nectar and not bathing. On the tenth morning Hecate met her and said that she had heard the girl’s voice but had not seen the kidnapper (Hymn to Demeter 47–58). The two went to Helios, the sun, who sees everything, and he told her that no other god was to blame but Zeus himself, who had given Persephone to his brother Hades as a wife (Hymn to Demeter 62–87). Demeter was now even angrier; she left the gathering of the gods and Mount Olympus and went among the cities of men, hiding her appearance (Hymn to Demeter 90–97).

The Institution of the Eleusinian Mysteries · Iambe, Demophon, and Metanira

Disguised as an old woman, Demeter sat down by the Maiden Well at Eleusis, where the four daughters of King Celeus found her when they came to draw water (Hymn to Demeter 98–110). They took her home to their mother Metanira, who asked her to nurse her late-born son Demophon. Demeter at first sat silent and would not eat or smile, until Iambe made her laugh with her jokes. Refusing red wine, she asked for a drink of barley, water and tender pennyroyal, the mixture called kykeon (Hymn to Demeter 184–211).

Demeter raised Demophon, who grew like a god, by anointing him with ambrosia and breathing on him, and each night she hid him in the fire like a brand, so that she might make him ageless and immortal. But Metanira spied on her one night, cried out in fear, and Demeter, furious, threw the child to the ground (Hymn to Demeter 231–254). She told Metanira that she had meant to make him immortal and ageless, but that now he would die like other men, though he would always have honour (Hymn to Demeter 256–264). Then she took off her old age and revealed her true size and beauty, and the house was filled with a lightning-like radiance (Hymn to Demeter 275–281). She ordered the people of Eleusis to build her a great temple and an altar, promising to teach them her rites herself (Hymn to Demeter 265–274). In Apollodorus’ version it is Praxithea who discovers the child in the fire and cries out, and the child is consumed by the flames (Apollodorus, Library 1.5.1).

The Return of Persephone and the Establishment of the Cycles

Celeus called an assembly and the people built the temple. Demeter sat in it, wasting away with longing for her daughter. She made that year the most terrible for mankind: the earth sent up no seed, the oxen drew ploughs in vain, and the whole race would have died of hunger, and the gods would have lost their honours and sacrifices, had Zeus not intervened (Hymn to Demeter 296–313). He sent first Iris and then all the gods, one after another, with gifts, but she would not set foot on Olympus or let the grain grow until she saw her daughter (Hymn to Demeter 314–333). So Zeus sent Hermes to the Underworld to bring Persephone back (Hymn to Demeter 334–346).

Hades agreed, but before she left he secretly gave her a pomegranate seed to eat, so that she could not stay with her mother for ever (Hymn to Demeter 371–374). When Demeter asked whether she had eaten anything below, Persephone admitted what had happened. The consequence was that she would spend a third of the year beneath the earth and the other two thirds with her mother and the other immortals; when the earth blooms with spring flowers, she would come up again (Hymn to Demeter 393–403). Zeus sent Rhea to ask Demeter to return and confirmed the same division (Hymn to Demeter 441–469). Demeter then made the fields bear crops again. In another version, Ovid has Jupiter divide the year into equal halves (Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.564–567), and Apollodorus, like the Hymn, gives the third (Apollodorus, Library 1.5.3).

Triptolemus and the Gift of Grain

After the earth bore again, Demeter taught the rulers of Eleusis – Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus and Celeus – the conduct of her rites and showed them her mysteries, which, the poet says, one may neither pass over nor speak of; blessed is the man who has seen them (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 473–482). Later accounts add that she gave Triptolemus wheat and a chariot drawn by winged serpents, from which he sowed the whole inhabited earth (Apollodorus, Library 1.5.2). Pausanias reports that the Athenians and the Argives told different stories about Triptolemus’ parentage (Pausanias 1.14.2–3).

Erysichthon

The goddess punished those who offended her. Erysichthon, the son of Triopas, cut down trees in a grove sacred to Demeter. The goddess, in the form of her priestess Nicippe, warned him, and when he threatened her she sent him an unending hunger (Callimachus, Hymn 6). In Ovid’s account the goddess sends Famine to him; he sells his daughter over and over, and at last begins to eat his own limbs (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.738–878).

The Thesmophoria

The Thesmophoria was a festival of Demeter celebrated by women. Herodotus says that the daughters of Danaus brought the rite from Egypt and taught it to the Pelasgian women (Herodotus 2.171), and he mentions the women of Ephesus keeping it (Herodotus 6.16). Apollodorus connects the custom of women exchanging jokes at the festival with Iambe’s jests at Eleusis (Apollodorus, Library 1.5.1).

Demeter Sources

The best sources for the principal myth of Demeter are the “Second Homeric Hymn,” and the fifth book of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” where the names of the main protagonists are changed to their Roman counterparts: Ceres, Pluto, and Proserpine. Other passages used above: Homer, Iliad 5.499–501 and Odyssey 5.125–128; Hesiod, Theogony 453–497, 886–914 and 969–974; Apollodorus, Library 1.1.5, 1.2.1, 1.5.1–3; Pausanias 1.14.2–3, 1.22.3, 1.42.6, 2.32.8, 8.25.4–7, 8.37.9 and 10.33.12; Plato, Cratylus 404b; Herodotus 2.171 and 6.16; Diodorus Siculus 5.49; Hyginus, Astronomica 2.4; Callimachus, Hymn 6; Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.564–567 and 8.738–878.

See Also: Persephone, Hades, Hecate, Helios, Demophon, Celeus, Triptolemus, Iasion