Demeter
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter 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.
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. 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. 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.
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, all three dedicated to religious situations and all three bearing just the name. It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in a Linear B inscription ; the word, da-ma-te, probably refers to "households". 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.Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter derived from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr. 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 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". John Chadwick also argues that the dā element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with "earth".
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- attached to -matura, akin to the Illyrian god Dei-paturos. The Lesbian form Dō- may simply reflect a different colloquial pronunciation of the non-Greek name.
Another theory suggests that the element De- might be connected with Deo, an epithet of Demeter 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. 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, and Demeter is "mother of the house". 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.
A sculpture of the Black Demeter was made by Onatas.
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. 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 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. In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong. 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.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 according to the earliest conception of Demeter as the Corn-Mother. She was sometimes called Chloe and sometimes Ioulo. 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 and Amaia. The goddess was the giver of abundance of food and she was known as Sito and Himalis. The bread from the first harvest-fruits was called thalysian bread in honour of Demeter. The sacrificial cakes burned on the altar were called "ompniai" and in Attica the goddess was known as Ompnia. These cakes were offered to all gods.
File:Roman copy of the Great Eleusinian relief hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg|thumb|right|240px|The Eleusinian trio: Persephone, Triptolemus and Demeter
In some feasts big loaves were offered to the goddess and in Boeotia she was known as
Megalartos and Megalomazos. Her function was extended to vegetation generally and to all fruits and she had the epithets eukarpos, karpophoros, malophoros and sometimes Oria. These epithets show an identity in nature with the earth goddess.
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.
According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, Demeter's greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture which gave to men a civilized way of life, and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.
These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter's myths and mystery cults. Demeter is the giver of mystic rites and the giver of the civilized way of life. Her epithet Eleusinia relates her with the Eleusinian mysteries, however at Sparta Eleusinia had an early use, and it was probably a name rather than an epithet. Demeter Thesmophoros is closely associated to the laws of cereal agriculture. The festival Thesmophoria was celebrated throughout Greece and was connected to a form of agrarian magic. Her epithet was the center of the festival called the Lithobolia. Near Pheneus in Arcadia she was known as Demeter-Thesmia, and she received rites according to the local version.
Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.