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Demeter ( ; Greek: , possibly "distribution-mother" from the noun of the Indo-European mother-earth *dheghom *mater, also called simply Δηώ), in Greek mythology, is the goddess of grain and fertility, the pure. Nourisher of the youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law. She is invoked as the "bringer of seasons" in the Homeric hymn, a subtle sign that she was worshipped long before she was made one of the Olympians. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter has been dated to about the seventh century BC. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon.
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Wikipedia About Demeter
Demeter ( ; Greek: , possibly "distribution-mother" from the noun of the Indo-European mother-earth *dheghom *mater, also called simply Δηώ), in Greek mythology, is the goddess of grain and fertility, the pure. Nourisher of the youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law. She is invoked as the "bringer of seasons" in the Homeric hymn, a subtle sign that she was worshipped long before she was made one of the Olympians. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter has been dated to about the seventh century BC. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon.
Her Roman equivalent is Ceres, from whom the word "cereal" is derived.
Demeter is easily confused with Gaia or Rhea, and with Cybele. The goddess's epithets reveal the span of her functions in Greek life. Demeter and Kore ("the maiden") are usually invoked as to theo ('"The Two Goddesses"), and they appear in that form in Linear B graffiti at Mycenaean Pylos in pre-classical times. A connection with the goddess-cults of Minoan Crete is quite possible.
According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, the greatest gifts which Demeter gave were cereal (also known as corn in modern Britain), which made man different from wild animals; and the Mysteries which give man higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.
Titles and functions
In various contexts, Demeter is invoked with many epithets, which offer clues to her roles:
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. 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)
- Kabeiraia, 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.)
