DEMETER. - Greek goddess. For Homer and Hesiod she is the goddess of farmers, of fields and of harvests; bread is her gift, and agricultural labors are sacred to her. Hesiod calls her the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. Both poets recall her love for Iasion, by whom she had Plutus (wealth), and her relations with Zeus, the father of Persephone. In cult, D. is closely linked with her daughter; the two are often designated by the appellation "the two goddesses," "the venerable ones," etc. The basis of the cult is the rape of Persephone, the fundamental theme of the Homeric hymn to D.: Hades, enamored of Persephone, carried her off; D., in her grief, wandered the world in search of her. Having reached Eleusis, she took the appearance of an old woman and became the nurse of Demophon, the king's son, but, surprised by his mother while she was holding him over the fire to confer immortality on him, she revealed herself and commanded her to institute in her honor rites that she would reveal to her. Meanwhile Hades promised to send Persephone back to her mother for part of the year, and D. restored fertility to the earth, which had become desert.
This myth, which is the center of the Eleusinian cult, is for some scholars pre-Hellenic; for others, three myths would be combined in it, two pre-Hellenic and one Greek. These are suppositions, because it is not certain that the Mycenaean building beneath the Telesterion of Eleusis was already used for cult at that time. Numerous cities in Arcadia sought legends relating to the wanderings of D. Especially in Arcadia there were many strange cults of D.: at Thelpusa a son of D. would have been a horse; at Phigalia the cult image of the goddess had a horse's head, and the cloak of Despoina (Persephone) had figures partly animal and partly human.
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Luisa Banti