Demeter
Mother goddess; goddess of marriage, sacred law and the harvest
Consort Iasion, Zeus, Oceanus, Karmanor and Triptolemus
Parents Cronus and Rhea
Children Persephone, Despoina, Arion, Plutus, Philomelus, Eubuleus, Chrysothemis and Amphitheus I
Roman equivalent Ceres
Festivals Thesmophoria
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Demeter (/diˈmiːtər/; Attic Δημήτηρ Dēmētēr. Doric Δαμάτηρ Dāmātēr) is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito (σίτος: wheat) as the giver of food or corn/grain[1] and Thesmophoros (θεσμός, thesmos: divine order, unwritten law) as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society.[2]
Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sanctity of marriage, the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of circa 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos, the "two mistresses and the king" may be related with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.[3][4] Her Roman equivalent is Ceres.[5]
Etymology
Didrachme from Paros island, struck at the Cyclades and representing Demeter
Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter (μήτηρ) derived from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (mother).[6] In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that Da (Δᾶ) (which became Attic Ge (Γῆ)) is the Doric form of De (Δῆ), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth".[7] This root also appears in the Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne, "earth-shaker", as an aspect of the god Poseidon.[8] However, the dā element is not so simply equated with "earth" according to John Chadwick.[9]
The element De- may be connected with Deo, a surname of Demeter[10] probably derived from the Cretan word dea (δηά), Ionic zeia (ζειά) meaning "barley", so that she is the Corn-Mother and the giver of food generally.[11] Arcadian cult to Demeter links her to a male deity (Greek: Πάρεδρος, Paredros), who accompanied the Great Goddess and has been interpreted as a possible substitution for Poseidon; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess.[12]
An alternative, Proto-Indo-European etymology comes through Potnia and Despoina; where Des- represents a derivative of PIE *dem (house, dome), and Demeter is "mother of the house" (from PIE *dems-méh₂tēr).[13]
Agricultural deity
According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals, and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.[14] These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter's myths and mystery cults. In Homer's Odyssey she is the blond-haired goddess who separates the chaff from the grain.[15] In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong.[16] Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.[17]
In Hesiod's Theogony, Demeter is the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. At the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, Demeter lured Iasion away from the other revelers. They had intercourse in a ploughed furrow in Crete, and she gave birth to a son, Ploutos.[18] Her daughter by Zeus was Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.[19]
Festivals and cults
Demeter's two major festivals were sacred mysteries. Her Thesmophoria festival (11–13 October) was women-only.[20] Her Eleusinian mysteries were open to initiates of any gender or social class. At the heart of both festivals were myths concerning Demeter as Mother and Persephone as her daughter.
Myths
Demeter and Persephone
Demeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Persephone-Kore at Selinunte, Sicily 6th century BC.
Demeter's virgin daughter Persephone was abducted to the underworld by Hades. Demeter searched for her ceaselessly, preoccupied with her loss and her grief. The seasons halted; living things ceased their growth, then began to die.[21] Faced with the extinction of all life on earth, Zeus sent his messenger Hermes to the underworld to bring Persephone back. Hades agreed to release her, but gave her a pomegranate. When she ate the pomegranate seeds, she was bound to him for one third of the year, either the dry Mediterranean summer, when plant life is threatened by drought,[22] or the autumn and winter.[23] There are several variations on the basic myth. In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, Hecate assists in the search and later becomes Persephone's underworld attendant.[24] In another, Persephone willingly and secretly eats the pomegranate seeds, thinking to deceive Hades, but is discovered and made to stay. In all versions, Persephone's time in the underworld corresponds with the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendar, and her return to the upper world with springtime. Demeter's descent to retrieve Persephone from the underworld is connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Demeter and her daughter Persephone were usually called:[25]
The goddesses, often distinguished as "the older" and "the younger" in Eleusis.
Demeters, in Rhodes and Sparta
The thesmophoroi, "the legislators" in the Thesmophoria.
The Great Goddesses, in Arcadia.
The mistresses in Arcadia.[26]
In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called "queens" (wa-na-ssoi). [4]

The myth of the capture of Persephone seems to be pre-Greek. In the Greek version Ploutos (πλούτος, wealth) represents the wealth of the corn that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (pithoi). Similar subterranean pithoi were used in ancient times for funerary practices is fused with Persephone, the Queen of the underworld. At the beginning of the autumn, when the corn of the old crop is laid on the fields she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter, for at this time the old crop and the new meet each other.[27]
According to the personal mythology of Robert Graves,[28] Persephone is not only the younger self of Demeter,[29] she is in turn also one of three guises of the Triple Goddess — Kore (the youngest, the maiden, signifying green young grain), Persephone (in the middle, the nymph, signifying the ripe grain waiting to be harvested), and Hecate (the eldest of the three, the crone, the harvested grain), which to a certain extent reduces the name and role of Demeter to that of group name. Before her abduction, she is called Kore; and once taken she becomes Persephone ('she who brings destruction').[30]
Demeter at Eleusis
Demeter's search for her daughter Persephone took her to the palace of Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. She assumed the form of an old woman, and asked him for shelter. He took her in, to nurse Demophon and Triptolemus, his sons by Metanira. To reward his kindness, she planned to make Demophon immortal; she secretly anointed the boy with ambrosia and laid him in the flames of the hearth, to gradually burn away his mortal self. But Metanira walked in, saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright. Demeter abandoned the attempt. Instead, she taught Triptolemus the secrets of agriculture, and he in turn taught them to any who wished to learn them. Thus, humanity learned how to plant, grow and harvest grain. The myth has several versions; some are linked to figures such as Eleusis, Rarus and Trochilus. The Demophon element may be based on an earlier folk tale.[31]

Demeter and Poseidon
Demeter and Poseidon's names appear in the earliest scratched notes in Linear B found at Mycenae and Mycenaean Pylos. E-ne-si-da-o-ne (earth-shaker) for Poseidon, and Si-to po-ti-ni-ja, who is probably related with Demeter.[32]
In the myths of isolated Arcadia in southern Greece, Despoina, is daughter of Demeter and Poseidon Hippios. These myths seem to be connected with the first Greek-speaking people who came from the north during the Bronze age. Poseidon represents the river spirit of the underworld and he appears as a horse as it often happens in northern-European folklore. He pursues the mare-Demeter and she bears one daughter who obviously originally had the form or the shape of a mare too. Demeter and Despoina were closely connected with springs and animals, related to Poseidon as a God of waters and especially with the mistress of the animals Artemis, the goddess of Nymphs.
Demeter as mare-goddess was pursued by Poseidon, and hid from him among the horses of King Onkios, but could not conceal her divinity. In the form of a stallion, Poseidon caught and covered her. Demeter was furious (erinys) at Poseidon's assault; in this furious form, she is known as Demeter Erinys. But she washed away her anger in the River Ladon, becoming Demeter Lousia, the "bathed Demeter".[33] "In her alliance with Poseidon," Karl Kerenyi noted,[34] "she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of grain or a mare." She bore a daughter Despoina (Δέσποινα: the "Mistress"), whose name should not be uttered outside the Arcadian Mysteries,[35] and a horse named Arion, with a black mane and tail.
In Arcadia, Demeter's mare-form was worshiped into historical times. Her xoanon of Phigaleia shows how the local cult interpreted her: a Medusa type with a horse's head with snaky hair, holding a dove and a dolphin, probably representing her power over air and water.[36]
The second mountain, Mt. Elaios, is about 30 stades from Phigaleia, and has a cave sacred to Demeter Melaine ["Black"]... the Phigalians say, they accounted the cave sacred to Demeter, and set up a wooden image in it. The image was made in the following fashion: it was seated on a rock, and was like a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and serpents and other beasts grew out of her head. Her chiton reached right to her feet, and she held a dolphin in one hand, a dove in the other. Why they made the xoanon like this should be clear to any intelligent man who is versed in tradition. They say they named her Black because the goddess wore black clothing. However, they cannot remember who made this xoanon or how it caught fire; but when it was destroyed the Phigalians gave no new image to the goddess and largely neglected her festivals and sacrifices, until finally barrenness fell upon the land.

Titles and functions
Demeter's epithets show her many religious functions. She was the "Corn-Mother" who blesses the harvesters. Some cults interpreted her as "Mother-Earth". Demeter may be linked to goddess-cults of Minoan Crete, and embody aspects of a pre-Hellenic Great Goddess. Her other epithets include:
Triptolemus, Demeter and Persephone by the Triptolemos-painter, ca 470 BC, Louvre
Aganippe ("the Mare who destroys mercifully", "Night-Mare") Potnia ("mistress") in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Hera especially, but also Artemis and Athena, are addressed as "potnia" as well.
Despoina ("mistress of the house"), a Greek word similar to the Mycenean potnia. This title was also applied to Persephone, Aphrodite and Hecate. Thesmophoros ("giver of customs" or even "legislator"), a role that links her to the even more ancient goddess Themis,[2] derived from thesmos, the unwritten law.[37] This title was connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals in Athens connected with marriage customs.
Erinys ("implacable"),[38] with a function similar with the function of the avenging Dike (Justice), goddess of moral justice based on custom rules who represents the divine retribution,[39] and the Erinyes, female ancient chthonic deities of vengeance and implacable agents of retribution.
Chloe ("the green shoot"),[40] that invokes her powers of ever-returning fertility, as does Chthonia. Chthonia ("in the ground"), chthonic Demeter in Sparta.[41]
Anesidora ("sending up gifts from the earth") applied to Demeter in Pausanias 1.31.4, also appears inscribed on an Attic ceramic a name for Pandora on her jar.[42] Europa ("broad face or eyes") at Lebadaea of Boeotia. She was the nurse of Trophonios to whom a chthonic cult and oracle was dedicated.[43] Kidaria in the mysteries of Pheneos in Arcadia [44] where the priest put on the mask of Demeter kept in a secret place. It seems that the cult was connected with the underworld and with an agrarian magic.[45]
Demeter might also be invoked in the guises of: Malophoros ("apple-bearer" or "sheep-bearer", Pausanias 1.44.3)
Lusia ("bathing", Pausanias 8.25.8)
Thermasia ("warmth", Pausanias 2.34.6)
Achaea, the name by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyraeans who had emigrated from Boeotia.[46][47]
Poppy goddess:
Theocritus, wrote of an earlier role of Demeter as a poppy goddess: For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess
Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands. — Idyll vii.157
In a clay statuette from Gazi (Heraklion Museum, Kereny 1976 fig 15), the Minoan poppy goddess wears the seed capsules, sources of nourishment and narcosis, in her diadem. "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess, who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis, and it is certain that in the Cretan cult sphere, opium was prepared from poppies" (Kerenyi 1976, p 24).