Myth · Greek

Demeter

Greek mythology — Olympian, goddess of grain, agriculture and the harvest

Demeter is the goddess of grain and the harvest, and the mother whose grief when her daughter was carried off to the underworld stopped the earth from bearing. Her search, her rest at Eleusis and the bargain that returns her daughter for part of each year make up the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the founding text of the Eleusinian Mysteries — the most famous initiation cult of the ancient world, whose secret was kept for two thousand years.

How to spot them

▸Sheaves of wheat or barley, the torch, the poppy and the pig
▸Epithets Thesmophoros ('law-bringer') and Chloe; the Thesmophoria, a women-only festival
▸Her grief turns the earth barren and gives the ancient world its explanation of winter
▸The sanctuary at Eleusis and its Mysteries, whose initiates were sworn to silence

Stories & episodes

Withheld every crop on earth until her daughter was given back

Zeus gave way when mankind began to starve and the gods lost their offerings.

Sat by the Maiden Well at Eleusis in the shape of an old woman

Taken in as a nurse by King Celeus and Queen Metaneira.

Held a king's baby son in the fire each night to burn away his mortality

His mother screamed, and the immortality of Demophon was lost.

Gave a prince a winged chariot and sent him to teach men to sow grain

Triptolemus, shown between the two goddesses on the great Eleusinian relief.

Punished the felling of her sacred grove with unappeasable hunger

Erysichthon ate everything he had, sold his daughter and finally devoured himself; told in Callimachus and Ovid.

Turned a boy who mocked her drinking into a lizard

Ascalabus, or Ascalaphus in another version, who also betrayed the eating of the pomegranate.

Founded the Mysteries at Eleusis in return for a kindness

Initiates were promised a better lot after death; the rite ran until Alaric's sack in AD 396.

Key ideas

The myth explains the seasons: the earth is barren for the months the daughter spends below, and returns to life when she comes up
The Mysteries were open to any Greek speaker, free or enslaved, and offered a hope for the afterlife that ordinary Olympian religion did not

Quick-fire facts

•Roman equivalent: Ceres, from whom 'cereal' derives
•Daughter of Cronus and Rhea; mother of Persephone by Zeus, and of the horse Arion and Despoina by Poseidon
•Her name is often read as 'grain mother' or 'earth mother'; the Linear B form da-ma-te is disputed
•The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (c. 7th century BC) is the main source for the abduction and the founding of Eleusis
•The Eleusinian Mysteries involved the kykeon, a barley drink, and a fast recalling the goddess's own
•Alcibiades was accused of profaning the Mysteries in 415 BC and condemned to death in absentia
•The Thesmophoria, her three-day autumn festival, was for married women only and is the setting of Aristophanes' comedy of that name
•Her sanctuaries also stood at Eleusis, Hermione and Enna in Sicily, where the abduction was placed
•The dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, and the element cerium are named for her Roman counterpart
•The Roman aediles Ceriales oversaw the grain supply, and the Cerealia was held in April

Drill it — 10 cards

1 / 10new card

Sources

Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Demeter
Homeric Hymn to Demeter The search, the stay at Eleusis and the founding of the Mysteries