Demeter
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
de-me'ter, in Greek my thology, one of the principal twelve deities. Demeter was the goddess of seed and harvest--the symbol of the nourishing and fertilizing principle in nature. She was the daughter of Cronos and Rhea, and mother of Persephone. The Greeks considered that good crops depended upon the payment of proper respect to this goddess. They annually offered bulls, cows, pigs, honey cakes, and fruits upon her altars. The myth of chief importance in the worship of Demeter related to Persephone. Zeus, Persephone's father, promised her in marriage to Hades, god of the lower world. Enticing the maiden to wander away to gather flowers in the field of Enna, Sicily, Zeus caused the earth to open, thus giving Hades and opportunity to carry her away. Demeter heard her daughter's cries, but had no suspicion of what had happened. She searched for Persephone through the whole earth. Finally Helios, the sun god, told Demeter that Hades had stolen her. The fountain Arethusa brought the sad mother news from her daughter. "While passing through the bowels of the earth," she said, "I beheld your Persephone. She is sad, but she reigns as queen in Erebus." Demeter vowed she would never return to Olympus without her daughter. Moreover, she afflicted the whole earth, since it had opened to receive her child, with sterility. Zeus sought by every means he could devise to induce her to break her vow. At last, fearing lest the race of men should perish, Zeus sent Hermes to Erebus to bring Persephone back. Hades was induced to let his wife return to her mother; but the wily monarch gave her a pomegranate, which she ate. Having eaten of the fruit of Erebus, Persephone could never altogether leave the infernal regions, but was thenceforth compelled to spend there a part of each year. Demeter, content with her daughter's presence for two-thirds of the year, restored fertility to the earth. She taught Triptolemus, whose parents had pitied her sorrows, to use the plow and to sow seed. This story is symbolic of the growth of grain which must remain in the dark ground unseen for a time, as Persephone must remain in Erebus. Demeter was identified by the Romans with their Ceres. Demeter is represented in ancient monuments as a beautiful woman of matronly appearance. Her face has a kindly expression. She is standing in a chariot drawn by dragons, her head crowned with a garland of wheat. A torch is in one hand and a sheaf of wheat or poppies in the other. See Ceres; Hades
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The myth Aiton's told in 1910 is still told the same way, because it comes almost verbatim from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and no new text has displaced it. What has shifted is the interpretation: Aiton's confident closing line that the story "is symbolic of the growth of grain" reflects the Victorian vegetation-myth reading associated with Frazer's Golden Bough, and most classicists now treat it less as a weather allegory than as a charter for the Eleusinian Mysteries and a story about marriage, motherhood and death. Excavation at Eleusis, carried on through the twentieth century, has laid bare the Telesterion where initiates gathered, and the site is now an archaeological park with its own museum. The old derivation of her name from a word for earth, taken for granted in 1910, is no longer accepted with any confidence.
Written for this edition, 2026.