Download Name: Date : Per: The Greek goddess of harvests and grains (as

DEMETER (Roman=Ceres)
Name:
Date :
Per:
The Greek goddess of harvests and grains (as exemplified by her symbol, a sheaf of
wheat); she is one of the major Olympian gods; a daughter of the Titans Kronos and
Rhea; and the mother of Persephone (father was Zeus) who was queen of the
Underworld, and Arion, the legendary majestic mythical horse (father was Poseidon).
Demeter’s (whose name means “earth mother” – de=earth/meter=mother) story
began when Zeus secretly agreed to allow his brother Hades to have his and
Demeter's daughter, Persephone, as his bride. One day when Persephone was out
picking flowers, the ground suddenly opened up and Hades burst forth in his chariot,
grabbed the surprised girl and carried her back to his subterranean realm. Hearing
that Persephone had disappeared, Demeter began a frantic search for her; finally, the
sun god, Helios, who had witnessed the abduction, revealed to Demeter what had
transpired.
Angry and distraught, Demeter caused drought and famine to sweep across the
earth. Zeus tried to reason with her, but she refused to listen to him and shunned
towering Olympus, the abode of the gods, instead taking human form and wandering
from one human habitation to another. One day, disguised as a sorrowful old woman,
Demeter stopped to rest in the town of Eleusis, near Athens. The local people treated
her kindly, and she finally revealed her true form and instructed them to build her a
large and splendid temple. Once the building was finished, Demeter entered it and, lit
by a single torch (which would also become her symbol), she brooded over the loss of
her daughter and refused to come out for a whole year.
Meanwhile, the earth was growing increasingly barren. Zeus worried that humanity
would soon be extinguished, and therefore the gods would receive no more sacrifices.
According to the oldest surviving version of the story, Zeus sent the rainbow goddess,
Iris, to coax Demeter back to Olympus. When this failed, Zeus the father sent all the
blessed gods to her [Demeter] in turn, and they came, one following another,
summoning her. But she firmly spurned all their attempts, for she declared she would
not set foot on sweet-smelling Olympus or bring forth fruit from the earth before she
looked upon her fair daughter again with her own eyes. When loud-thundering Zeus…
heard this, he sent Hermes… so that he might persuade Hades with gentle words to
allow him to lead chaste Persephone forth from the misty land of darkness to the
light… in order that her mother might behold her with her own eyes and cease her
bitter anger. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 325–350)
A deal was struck in which Hades and Zeus agreed to allow Persephone to return to
the earth's surface on the condition that she ate nothing while in the Underworld.
Unfortunately, the girl ate some pomegranate seeds; so Zeus decreed that thereafter
she could spend only part of the year on the surface with her mother and must dwell
the rest of the time with Hades in his kingdom. Demeter did not like this outcome, but
she finally accepted it and restored her blessings to humanity during the time that
Persephone was with her. For the months that Persephone spent at Mt. Olympus, crops
world grow and produce. When Persephone had to return to the underworld, crops
would die and nothing would grow. Thus, Demeter became the goddess of the
seasons. To teach people how to farm in a world where seasons were present, she
sent an Athenian youth, Triptolemus, to journey from place to place teaching people
the agricultural arts. And she also saw to it that her shrine at Eleusis had a proper
priesthood so it would thrive and attract many worshipers.
With this myth as their basis, the Eleusinian Mysteries did indeed thrive. The classical
Greeks celebrated Demeter's festival in September, in one ceremony reenacting the
goddess's loss of and ultimate reunion with her daughter. Demeter's cult also required
new members to undergo a secret initiation (hence the name Mysteries). Membership
was open to all, male or female, free or slave. New initiates first purified themselves by
bathing in the sea, then sacrificed a young pig. After that, they joined the other
members in a great procession in which they carried the “sacred objects” (stored in
the Eleusinion, a temple near the foot of the Acropolis in Athens) to Demeter's
sanctuary at Eleusis, about a twelve-mile walk. The nature of these objects was as
secret as the initiation itself. The festival's climax occurred in the sanctuary's initiation
hall, where apparently a cult leader revealed the sacred objects. This worship of
Demeter remained popular and active among generations of Greeks, and later a
number of Romans (who identified her with an Italian goddess, Ceres), until the
Christian Roman emperor Theodosius I suppressed the Mysteries in A.D. 393.