Demeter

Lore & Background

One of the most notable Homeric Hymns, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, tells the story of Persephone's abduction by Hades and Demeter's search for her. When Hades, the King of the Underworld, wished to make Persephone his wife, he abducted her from a field while she was picking flowers, with Zeus's leave. Demeter searched everywhere to find her missing daughter to no avail until she was informed that Hades had taken her to the Underworld. In response, Demeter neglected her duties as goddess of agriculture, plunging the earth into a deadly famine where nothing would grow, causing mortals to die.

Zeus ordered Hades to return Persephone to her mother to avert the disaster. However, because Persephone had eaten food from the Underworld, she could not stay with Demeter forever, but had to divide the year between her mother and her husband, explaining the seasonal cycle as Demeter does not let plants grow while Persephone is gone. Her cult titles include Sito, 'she of the Grain', as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros, 'giver of customs' or 'legislator', in association with the secret female-only festival called the Thesmophoria.

She and Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a happy afterlife. This religious tradition was based on ancient agrarian cults of agricultural communities and predated the Olympian pantheon, probably having its roots in the Mycenaean period c. 1400–1200 BC. Demeter was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele, and she was identified with the Roman goddess Ceres.

Reader's Guide

Demeter is frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She is also sometimes pictured with her daughter Persephone. However, Demeter is not generally portrayed with any of her consorts; the exception is Iasion, the youth of Crete who lay with her in a thrice-ploughed field and was killed afterward by a jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt. Demeter is assigned the zodiac constellation Virgo, the Virgin, by Marcus Manilius in his 1st-century Roman work Astronomicon.

In art, the constellation Virgo holds Spica, a sheaf of wheat in her hand and sits beside constellation Leo the Lion. In Arcadia, she was known as 'Black Demeter'. She was said to have taken the form of a mare to escape the pursuit of her younger brother, Poseidon, and having been raped by him despite her disguise, she dressed all in black and retreated into a cave to mourn and to purify herself. She was consequently depicted with the head of a horse in this region. A sculpture of the Black Demeter was made by Onatas.