In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter (; Attic: Dēmḗtēr ; Doric: Dāmā́tēr) is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth. Although Demeter is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, and marriage, and had connections to the Underworld. She is also called Deo ( Dēṓ).
In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Like her other siblings except Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant and rescued by Zeus. Through Zeus, she became the mother of Persephone, a fertility goddess and resurrection deity.Lorena Laura Stookey, Thematic Guide to World Mythology, p. 99.Lee W. Bailey, "Dying and rising gods" in: David A. Leeming, Kathryn Madden and Stanton Marlan (eds.) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (2009) Springer, pages 266–267 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",. Cf. . as the giver of food or grain,Eustathius of Thessalonica, scholia on Homer, 265. and Thesmophoros (, thesmos: divine order, unwritten law; , phoros: bringer, bearer), "giver of customs" or "legislator", in association with the secret female-only festival called the Thesmophoria. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law and the cycle of life and death. 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 –1200 BC.John Chadwick, The Mycenean World, Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Demeter was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele, and she was identified with the Roman goddess Ceres.
Etymology Demeter may appear in Linear A as da-ma-te on three documents (AR Zf 1 and 2, and KY Za 2), all three dedicated to religious situations and all three bearing just the name (i-da-ma-te on AR Zf 1 and 2).Y. Duhoux, "LA > B da-ma-te=Déméter? Sur la langue du linéaire A," Minos 29/30 (1994–1995): 289–294. It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in a Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscription (PY En 609); the word , da-ma-te, probably refers to "households".Y. Duhoux and A. Morpurgo-Davies, Companion to Linear B, vol. 2 (2011), p. 26. But see Ventris/Chadwick, Documents in Mycenean Greek, p. 242, B.Dietriech (2004), The origins of the Greek religion, Bristol Phoenix Press, p. 172 On the other hand, , si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, "Potnia of the Grain", is regarded as referring to her Bronze Age predecessor or to one of her epithets.Inscription MY Oi 701. Cf. .
Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter () derived from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *méh₂tēr (mother). In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that Da (),. a word which corresponds to Gē () in Attic, is the Doric form of De (), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth". Liddell & Scott find this "improbable" and Beekes writes, "there is no indication that [da] means 'earth, although it has also been assumed in the name of Poseidon found in the Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne, "earth-shaker"..R. S. P. Beekes. Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 324.Adams, John Paul, Mycenean divinities – List of handouts for California State University Classics 315. Retrieved 7 March 2011. John Chadwick also argues that the dā element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with "earth".Chadwick, The Mycenaean World, Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 87) "Every Greek was aware of the maternal functions of Demeter; if her name bore the slightest resemblance to the Greek word for 'mother', it would inevitably have been deformed to emphasize that resemblance. [...] How did it escape transformation into *Gāmātēr, a name transparent to any Greek speaker?" Compare the Latin transformation Iuppiter and Diespiter vis-a-vis *Deus pater.
M. L. West has proposed that the word Demeter, initially Damater, could be a borrowing from an Illyrian deity attested in the Messapic goddess Damatura, with a form dā- ("earth", from PIE *dʰǵʰ(e)m-) attached to -matura ("mother"), akin to the Illyrian god Dei-paturos (dei-, "sky", attached to -paturos, "father"). The Lesbian form Dō- may simply reflect a different colloquial pronunciation of the non-Greek name.West 2007, p. 176: "The ∆α-, however, cannot be explained from Greek. But there is a Messapic Damatura or Damatira, and she need not be dismissed as borrowing from Greek; she matches the Illyrian Deipaturos both in the agglutination and in the transfer to the thematic declension (-os, -a). (It is noteworthy that sporadic examples of a thematically declined ∆ημήτρα are found in inscriptions.) Damater/Demeter could therefore be borrowing from Illyrian. An Illyrian Dā- may be derived from *Dʰǵʰ(e)m-"
Another theory suggests that the element De- might be connected with Deo, an epithet of DemeterOrphic Hymn 40 to Demeter (translated by Thomas Taylor: "O universal mother Deo famed, august, the source of wealth and various names". and it could derive from the Cretan word dea (), Ionic zeia ()—variously identified with emmer, spelt, rye, or other grains by modern scholars—so that she is the mother and the giver of food generally.Compare sanskr. yava, lit. yavai, Δά is probably derived from δέFα :Martin Nilsson, Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, vol. I (Verlag C.H.Beck) pp 461–462. This view is shared by British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison, who suggests that Démeter's name means Grain-Mother, instead of Earth-Mother.
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).Frisk, Griechisches Etymological Woerterbuch. Entry 1271 R. S. P. Beekes rejects a Greek interpretation, but not necessarily an Indo-European one.
Iconography
Demeter was frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was 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.Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, Esther Eidinow, eds. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. OUP Oxford, 2014; Pausanias, 8.42.1–4.
A sculpture of the Black Demeter was made by Onatas.Pausainias, 8.42.7.
Description In the earliest conceptions of Demeter she is the goddess of grain and threshing, however her functions were extended beyond the fields and she was often identified with the earth goddess (Gaia). Some of the epithets of Gaia and Demeter are similar showing the identity of their nature. In most of her myths and cults, Demeter is the "Grain-Mother" or the "Earth-Mother". In the older chthonic cults the earth goddess was related to the Underworld and in the secret rites (mysteries) Demeter and Persephone share the double function of death and fertility. Demeter is the giver of the secret rites and the giver of the laws of cereal agriculture. She was occasionally identified with the Great Mother Rhea-Cybele who was worshipped in Crete and Asia Minor with the music of cymbals and violent rites. It seems that poppies were connected with the cult of the Great Mother.
As an agricultural goddess
In epic poetry and Hesiod's Theogony, Demeter is the Grain-Mother, the goddess of cereals who provides grain for bread and blesses its harvesters. In Homer's Iliad, the light-haired Demeter with the help of the wind separates the grain from the chaff. Homer mentions the Thalysia a Greek harvest-festival of first fruits in honour of Demeter .Iliad 9.534 In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong.Hesiod Works and Days, 465 This was her main function at Eleusis, and she became panhellenic. In Cyprus, "grain-harvesting" was damatrizein. Demeter was the zeidoros arοura, the Homeric "Mother Earth arοura" who gave the gift of cereals (zeai or deai).Nilsson, (1967), Geschichte Vol I, 461–466
Most of the epithets of Demeter describe her as a goddess of grain. Her name Deo in literature probably relates her with deai a Cretan word for cereals. In Attica she was called Haloas (of the threshing floor) according to the earliest conception of Demeter as the Corn-Mother. She was sometimes called Chloe (ripe-grain or fresh-green) and sometimes Ioulo (ioulos : grain sheaf). Chloe was the goddess of young corn and young vegetation and "Iouloi" were harvest songs in honour of the goddess. The reapers called Demeter Amallophoros (bringer of sheaves) and Amaia (reaper). The goddess was the giver of abundance of food and she was known as Sito (of the grain) and Himalis (of abundance ).Stalmith in GRBS48 (2008), 116-117 The bread from the first harvest-fruits was called thalysian bread (Thalysia) in honour of Demeter.Nilsson, (1967), Geschichte Vol I, 468 The sacrificial cakes burned on the altar were called "ompniai" and in Attica the goddess was known as Ompnia (related to corns). These cakes were offered to all gods.
In some feasts big loaves (artoi) were offered to the goddess and in Boeotia she was known as Megalartos (of the big loaf) and Megalomazos (of the big mass, or big porridge). Her function was extended to vegetation generally and to all fruits and she had the epithets eukarpos (of good crop), karpophoros (bringer of fruits), malophoros (apple bearer) and sometimes Oria (all the fruits of the season). These epithets show an identity in nature with the earth goddess.Nilsson(1967) Geschichte Vol I, 412, 467–478Cole(1994) in Placing the gods 201–202
The central theme in the Eleusinian Mysteries was the reunion of Persephone with her mother, Demeter when new crops were reunited with the old seed, a form of eternity.