Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter (Attic Δημήτηρ Dēmētēr. Doric Δαμάτηρ Dāmātēr) was the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, the seasons (personified by the Hours), and the harvest. One of her surnames is Sito (: wheat) as the giver of food or corn. 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 also predated the Olympian pantheon.

Her Roman counterpart is Ceres.

Etymology
The second part of the name "De-meter" is generally given as μήτηρ ("meter": mother). The first element, Δα ("da") (which became Attic Δη) is possibly the Doric form of ge (earth), therefore Demeter is "Mother earth" but this is debated. It is possible that da is the Doric form of Dan (Δάν) or Zan (Zάν) (Zeus), who was venerated in Creta as Zeus Velchanos (the boy Zeus), the local child of the Minoan Great Mother.

The da element appears also in the name of the God Poseidon (Doric: Potei-das, Aeolic:Potei-dan), which can be interpreted as "Master of the earth" (from the root Pota meaning "lord") but it is uncertain Potei-dan can also be interpreted as "Zeus of the waters" (from poton, "drink" and Dan:"Zeus"),or "master of the waters" (from the root daFwn "water").

Besides the uncertain etymologies it seems that "Damater" took the place of the Minoan Great Goddess and Poteidas or Poteidan substituted the male god who accompanied her (Greek:paredros), and he is identified in the Arcadian cult of Demeter and Persephone. In the Linear B (Mycenean Greek) tablets found at Pylos, John Chadwick identifies the "two mistresses (Potniai) and the king" with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.

Demeter is also known as Deo, possibly from the Cretan word deai "barley", therefore she is the mother or giver of barley and food generally (Homer Iliad v 500).

The Messapian goddess "Damatura" is probably a transformation of the Greek name as in "Deipaturos" (Zeus). Julius Pokorny derives the name from the PIE root *ghem, "earth", also alb. dhẻ (comp.Δημήτηρ-Demeter) and *ghom ("Δαμία-Damia- surname of Demeter"). From the same root the Thrakian Semele (mother earth).

Corn mother at Eleusis
According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, the greatest gifts which Demeter gave were cereal (also known as corn in modern Britain), the cultivation of which made man different from wild animals; and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to about the seventh century BC. she is invoked as the "bringer of seasons", a subtle sign that she was worshipped long before she was made one of the Olympians. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon.

Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.

Titles and functions
The goddess's epithets reveal the span of her functions in Greek life. Demeter and Core ("the maiden") are usually invoked as to theo ('"The Two Goddesses"), and they appear in that form in Linear B inscriptions at Mycenaean Pylos in pre-classical times. (Mycenaean Greek:potniai, sing:potnia from PIE "pota" meaning ruler). In Olympia they were called Despoine (plural of Despoina derived from PIE *dems-pota meaning absolute ruler). Demeter is easily confused with Gaia or Rhea, and with Cybele, all of them embodying aspects of the pre-Hellenic Great Goddess. A connection with the goddess-cults of Minoan Crete is quite possible.

In various contexts, Demeter is invoked with many epithets, which offer clues to her roles:

Potnia ("mistress") in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the goddess of harvest inscriptions in Linear B. Hera especially, but also Artemis and Athena, are addressed as "potnia" as well.

Despoina (mistress), a Greek word similar to the Mycenean potnia. This title was also applied to Persephone, Aphrodite and Hecate.

As Erinys ("implacable"), a stern Demeter is invoked: the Erinyes or furies, were the implacable agents of retribution.

In a similar sense, she could be invoked as Thesmophoros ("giver of customs" or even "legislator") a role that links her to the even more ancient goddess Themis. This title was connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals in Athens connected with marriage customs.

The title, Chloe ("the green shoot"), invokes her powers of ever-returning fertility, as does Chthonia ("in the ground"). Anesidora ("sending up gifts from the earth") applied to Demeter in Pausanias 1.31.4, also appears inscribed on an Attic ceramic as a name for Pandora on her jar.

As Europa (broad face or eyes) at Lebadaea of Boeotia, nurse of Trophonios to whom a chthonic cult and oracle was dedicated. Europa was a Phoenecian princess who Zeus abducted transformed in a white bull, and carried her to Creta.

Demeter might also be invoked in the guise of:
 * Malophoros ("apple-bearer" or "sheep-bearer", Pausanias 1.44.3)
 * Kidaria (Pausanias 8.13.3),
 * Lusia ("bathing", Pausanias 8.25.8)
 * Thermasia ("warmth", Pausanias 2.34.6)
 * Sophia D., a pre-Greek name of uncertain meaning that links Demeter as patroness to the Kabeiroi.
 * Achaea, the name by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyraeans who had emigrated from Boeotia.


 * Thesmophoros ("giver of customs" or even "legislator", a role that links her to the even more ancient goddess Themis. This title was connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals in Athens connected with marriage customs.)

Theocritus, wrote of an earlier role of Demeter:
 * 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).

In honor of Demeter of Mysia a seven-day festival was held at Pellené in Arcadia (Pausan. 7. 27, 9). 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.



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, and Samothrace.

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 humankind 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 Poseidon
Demeter and Poseidon's names are linked in the earliest scratched notes in Linear B found at Mycenaean Pylos, where they appear as DA-MA-TE and PO-SE-DA-O-NE in the context of sacralized lot-casting.

In one myth, Poseidon (his name seems to signify "consort of the distributor") once pursued Demeter, the distributor and Earth Mother, in her archaic form as a mare-goddess. She resisted Poseidon, but she could not disguise her divinity among the horses of King Onkios. Poseidon became a stallion and covered her. She bore a daughter Despoina (: the "Mistress"), whose name should not be uttered outside the Arcadian Mysteries, and a horse named Arion, with a black mane and tail.The title Despoine was also given to Persephone.

In Arcadia, Demeter was worshiped as a horse-headed deity into historical times:

Demeter Erinys
As for Demeter, she was literally furious (Demeter Erinys) at the assault, but washed away her anger in the River Ladon, becoming Demeter Lousia, the "bathed Demeter". "In her alliance with Poseidon," Karl Kerenyi noted, "she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of corn or a mare." In her period of eclipse, the Grain Goddess brought desiccation and death to the croplands of which she was the patroness. Pausanias explicitly connects the neglect of her festival with the barrenness of Phigalia. The rites at Phigaleia noted by Pausanias remained local; by contrast, the specifically Eleusinian mythic theme of Demeter and Persephone, accounting in another way for the annual eclipse of Demeter, was given the widest conceivable currency through the Eleusinian Mysteries that celebrated and recreated it, and passed into the mainstream tradition, as it was carried by literary sources.

Demeter and Persephone
The central myth of Demeter, which is at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries, is her relationship with Persephone, her daughter. In the Olympian pantheon, Persephone became the consort of Hades (Roman Pluto, the underworld god). Demeter had a large scope of abilities. Besides being the goddess of the harvest, she also controlled the seasons, and because of that she was capable of destroying all life on earth. In fact, her powers were able to influence Zeus into making Hades bring her daughter Persephone up from the underworld. Persephone became the goddess of the underworld when Hades abducted her from the earth and brought her into the underworld. She had been picking flowers, when a great chasm opened up behind her and Hades rode out in a chariot and took her, bringing her with him back down into the Underworld. Life came to a standstill as the depressed Demeter searched for her lost daughter, wandering the Earth night and day.

Finally, Zeus could not put up with the dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone by sending Hermes to retrieve her. Hades agreed, but said he could send her up only if she hadn't eaten any food in the underworld. Before Persephone was released, she had eaten a number of pomegranate seeds (the number varies in various versions; one, three, four, or even seven according to the telling), which forced her to return for four months each year. According to some modern writers such as Walter Burkert, this corresponds with the dry Mediterranean summer, during which plant life is threatened by drought. Winter, autumn, and spring by comparison have heavy rainfall and mild temperatures in which plant life flourishes. However ancient commentaries written by figures such as Porphyry did not understand the Myth in this way and saw Persephone's descent as connected with the autumn and winter months. It was during her trip to retrieve Persephone from the underworld that she revealed the Eleusinian Mysteries.

In an alternate version, Hecate rescued Persephone. In other alternative versions, Persephone was not tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds but chose to eat them herself, or ate them accidentally, that is, not knowing the effect it would have or perhaps even recognizing it for what it was. In the latter version it is claimed that Ascalaphus, one of Hades' gardeners, claimed to have witnessed her do so, at the moment that she was preparing to return with Hermes. Regardless, the result is the occurrence of the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendars. Persephone's return made spring.

According to the personal mythology of Robert Graves, Persephone is not only the younger self of Demeter, she is in turn also one of three guises of the Triple Goddess — Kore (the youngest, the maiden, signifying green young corn), Persephone (in the middle, the nymph, signifying the ripe ears waiting to be plucked), and Hecate (the eldest of the three, the crone, the harvested corn), which to a certain extent reduces the name and role of Demeter to that of groupname. Before Persephone was abducted by Hades, an event witnessed by the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd Eubuleus (they saw a girl being carried of into the earth which had violently opened up, in a black chariot, driven by an invisible driver), she was called Kore. It is when she is taken that she becomes Persephone ('she who brings destruction'). Hecate was also reported to have told Demeter that she had heard Kore scream that she was being raped.

Demeter's stay at Eleusis
Demeter was searching for her daughter Persephone (also known as Kore). 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 as a god, by coating and anointing him with Ambrosia, breathing gently upon him while holding him in her arms and bosom, and making him immortal by burning his mortal spirit away in the family hearth every night. She put him in the fire at night like a firebrand or ember without the knowledge of his parents.

Demeter was unable to complete the ritual because his mother Metanira walked in and saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright, which angered Demeter, who lamented that foolish mortals do not understand the concept and ritual.

Instead of making Demophon immortal, Demeter chose to teach Triptolemus the art of agriculture and, 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 in 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 murder Triptolemus. Demeter turned him into a lynx.

Some scholars believe the Demophon story is based on an earlier prototypical folk tale.

Children

 * Persephone (by Zeus)
 * Zagreus (by Zeus)
 * Despoina (by Poseidon)
 * Arion (by Poseidon)
 * Plutus (by Iasion)
 * Philomelus (by Iasion)
 * Eubuleus (by Karmanor)
 * Khrysothemis (by Karmanor)
 * Amphitheus I (by Triptolemus)

Portrayals

 * 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 her daughter 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, and envious 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.
 * Demeter placed Aethon, the god of famine, in Erysichthon's stomach, making him permanently famished. This was a punishment for cutting down trees in a sacred grove.