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Dêmêtêr (or Demetra) (DEH-MEH-ter) ("goddess mother" or "barley mother") is the Greek goddess of agriculture, the pure nourisher of youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law. She is invoked as the "bringer of seasons" in the Homeric hymn, a subtle sign that she was worshiped long before the Olympians arrived. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon.

Demeter is easily confused with Gaia or Rhea, and with Cybele. The goddess's epithets reveal the span of her functions in Greek life. Demeter ("grain-mother" or "earth-mother") and Kore ("grain-maiden") are usually invoked as to theo ('"The Two Goddesses"), and they appear in that form in Linear B graffiti at Mycenaean Pylos in pre-Hellenic times: the Two were different aspects of the single triple Great Mother Goddess familiar from Minoan Crete. Demeter is invoked as Potnia ("mistress") four times in the Homeric hymn. In various other contexts, Demeter is invoked with the epithets Demeter Chloe ("the green shoot" the "ever-young", Pausanias 1.22.3) for she is the power that infuses fertility, as Demeter Anesidora ("sending up gifts" from the earth Pausanias 1.31.4), as Demeter Malophoros ("apple-bearer" or "sheep-bearer" Pausanias 1.44.3), as the Goddess with the great loaves, as Demeter Kidaria (Pausanias 8.13.3), Demeter Chthonia ("of the Underworld" or "the earth-born one," Pausanias 3.14.5), or Demeter Erinys ("implacable," Pausanias 8.25.50), Demeter Thermasia ("warmth," Pausanias 2.34.6) and Demeter Kabeirion. As a goddess of marriage customs, women in Greek cities celebrated the festival of Thesmophoria, which comes from another epithet for Demeter: Demeter Thesmophoros ("she of the regular customs").

In honor of Demeter of Mysia a seven-day festival was held at Pellené in Arcadia (Pausan. 7. 27, 9). It lasted for seven days. Pausanias passed the shrine to Demeter at Mysia on the road from Mycenae to Argos but all he could draw out to explain the archaic name was a myth of an eponymous Mysius who venerated Demeter.

Demeter Lusia (Demeter "bathing") is mentioned by Pausanias at another point. (8.25.6)

Major sites for the cult of Demeter were not confined to any localized part of the Greek world: there were sites at Eleusis, in Sicily, Hermion, in Crete, Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Selinus, Tegea, Thorikos, Dion, Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna, Samosthrace

She was associated with the Roman goddess Ceres. When Demeter was given a genealogy, she was the daughter of Cronos and Rhea, and therefore the elder sister of Zeus. Her priestesses were addressed with the title Melissa.

Demeter taught mankind the arts of agriculture: sowing seeds, ploughing, harvesting, etc. She was especially popular with rural folk, partly because they most benefited directly from her assistance, and partly because rural folk are more conservative about keeping to the old ways. Demeter herself was central to the older religion of Greece. Relics unique to her cult, such as votive clay pigs, were being fashioned in the Neolithic. In Roman times, a sow was still sacrificed to Ceres following a death in the family, to purify the household.

Demeter and Persephone

The central myth of Demeter, which is at the heart of the Eleusinian mysteries is her relationship with Persephone, her daughter and own younger self. In the Olympian pantheon, Persephone became the consort of Hades (Roman Plutus, the underworld god of wealth. Persephone became the goddess of the underworld when Hades abducted her from the earth and brought her into the underworld. She had been playing with some nymphs (or Leucippe) whom Demeter changed into the Sirens as punishment for not having interfered. Life came to a standstill as the depressed Demeter (goddess of the earth) searched for her lost daughter (resting on the stone, Agelasta). Finally, Zeus could not put up with the dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone by sending Hermes to retrieve her. But before she was released, Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, which forced her to return six months each year. When Demeter and her daughter were together, the earth flourished with vegetation. But for six months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. It was during her trip to retrieve Persephone from the underworld that she revealed the Eleusinian mysteries. In an alternate version, Hecate rescued Persephone.

While Demeter was searching for her daughter, having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, she received a hospitable welcome from Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica (and also Phytalus). He asked her to nurse Demophon and Triptolemus, his sons by Metanira. As a gift to Celeus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make Demophon immortal by burning his mortal spirit away in the family hearth every night. She was unable to complete the ritual because Metanira walked in on her one night. Instead, Demeter chose to teach Triptolemus the art of agriculture; from him the rest of Greece learned to plant and reap crops. He flew across the land on a winged chariot while Demeter and Persephone cared for him, and helped him complete his mission of educating the whole of Greece on the art of agriculture.

Later, Triptolemus taught Lyncus, King of the Scythians the arts of agriculture but he refused to teach it to his people and then tried to kill Triptolemus. Demeter turned him into a lynx.

Demeter was usually portrayed on a chariot, and frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was also sometimes pictured with Persephone.

Demeter is not generally portrayed with a consort: the exception is Iasion, the youth of Crete who lay with Demeter in a thrice-ploughed field, and was sacrificed afterwards— by a jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt, Olympian mythography adds, but the Cretan site of the myth is a sign that the Hellenes knew this was an act of the ancient Demeter. Poseidon (his name seems to signify "consort of the Goddess") once pursued Demeter, in her archaic form as a mare-goddess. She turned herself into a mare; and he became a stallion and covered her. Their child was a horse, Arion, and the goddess whose name is not uttered outside the Eleusinian mysteries. In Arcadia, Demeter was worshiped as a horse-headed deity into historical times.

Demeter placed Aethon, the god of famine, in Erysichthon's gut, making him permanently famished. This was a punishment for cutting down trees in a sacred grove.

External link

• "Temple of Demeter" website

References

• Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903
• Carl Kerényi, Eleusis: archetypal image of mother and daughter, 1967.
• Walter Burkert (1985) Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, 1985.
• Carl Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth, 1994.