Reference
- Demeter(dĭmē'tӘr), in Greek religion and mythology, goddess of harvest and fertility; daughter of Kronos and Rhea. She was the mother of Persephone by Zeus. When Pluto abducted Persephone, Demeter grieved so inconsolably that the earth became barren through her neglect. Searching for her daughter, she wandered to Eleusis, where the Eleusinian Mysteries were inaugurated in her honor. She revealed to Triptolemus, an Eleusinian, the art of growing and using corn. The Thesmophoria, a fertility festival held in her honor at Athens, was attended only by women.
- CeresIn Roman religion, the goddess of the growth of food plants, sometimes worshiped in association with the earth goddess Tellus. Her cult was overlaid by that of Demeter, who was worshiped in Greece and Sicily. According to tradition, her cult was introduced into Rome in 496 bc to check a famine. Her temple on Aventine Hill was known as a centre of plebeian religious and political activities and for its artwork.
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Perspectives
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C.E., is a key to understanding the psychological and religious world of ancient Greek women. The poem tells how Hades, lord of the underworld, abducted the goddess Persephone and how her grieving mother, Demeter, the goddess of grain, forced the gods to allow Persephone to return to her for part of each year. Helene Foley presents the Greek text and an annotated translation of this poem, together with selected essays that give the reader a rich understanding of the Hymn's structure and artistry, its role in the religious life of the ancient world, and its meaning for the modern world.
The Lost Girls
The Lost Girls analyses a number of British writers between 1850 and 1930 for whom the myth of Demeter's loss and eventual recovery of her cherished daughter Kore-Persephone, swept off in violent and catastrophic captivity by Dis, God of the Dead, had both huge personal and aesthetic significance. This book, in addition to scrutinising canonical and less well-known texts by male authors such as Thomas Hardy, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, also focuses on unjustly neglected women writers - Mary Webb and Mary Butts - who utilised occult tropes to relocate themselves culturally, and especially in Butts's case to recover and restore a forgotten legacy, the myth of matriarchal origins. These novelists are placed in relation not only to one another but also to Victorian archaeologists and especially to Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928), one of the first women to distinguish herself in the history of British Classical scholarship and whose anthropological approach to the study of early Greek art and religion both influenced - and became transformed by - the literature. Rather than offering a teleological argument that moves lock-step through the decades, The Lost Girls proposes chapters that detail specific engagements with Demeter-Persephone through which to register distinct literary-cultural shifts in uses of the myth and new insights into the work of particular writers.
The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII
This is the climactic volume on the archaeological and architectural history from ca. 31 B.C. to A.D. 365 of the extramural sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya. It traces the characteristics of major Demeter sanctuaries elsewhere and places the Cyrene sanctuary within the context of this development.
Hades Abducts Persephone
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Persephone was abducted by Hades and brought to the kingdom of the underworld. Demeter wandered the universe in search of her daughter
Demeter, Nanny
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowDemeter renounced her duties and withdrew from Mt. Olympus. While she was looking for her daughter, she ignored her beauty and looked like an old woman. She was welcomed by the Queen who asked her to nurse her son Demophon. To reward the hospitality she intended to make the boy immortal by placing him each night in the hearth, to burn his mortal nature away.
Triptolemus, Teaching the Art of Agriculture
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowFestivals held in spring and autumn celebrate the Eleusinian Mysteries in memory of the goddess, Demeter. Demeter taught Triptolemus the secrets of the earth and he in turn taught others the art of agriculture
Persephone
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowDemeter was the sister of Zeus by whom she became the mother of Persephone.
Online Resources
- Rituals and Votive Offerings at the Sanctuary of Demeter in KaunosThe sanctuary of Demeter at Kaunos is one of seven sanctuaries of Demeter in Caria. The rocky outcrops at the sanctuary of Demeter in Kaunos, which were the stages for rituals, were central elements in the celebration of festivals and rituals performed in honour of Demeter at Kaunos. Numerous votives recovered from the cavities of the rocky outcrops were a special form of votive offerings and deposition practiced at this site. The votives consist of clay figurines, miniature pottery, kernoi, coins, and 60 thousand miniature lamps. A special feature of the clay figurines of young and mature men is holes in their hands, which served for the offering of small branches. The present article proposes an interpretation of the rocky outcrops, libation, hydrophoroi, food offerings, kernoi, male figurines holding branches, and lamps used at the rituals of Demeter. The features of the sanctuary of Demeter at Kaunos and its rich votive deposits have the potential to enrich our understanding of the Carian cults of Demeter.
- Terracotta Models of Sandaled Feet: Votives from the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on AcrocorinthThis article presents four previously unpublished terracotta models of sandaled feet from the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on Acrocorinth. Dated to the late 6th or early 5th century B.C., they are attributed to a local Corinthian workshop, most probably the Potters' Quarter, where three other similar models were produced. Evidence deriving from the sanctuary's other offerings, and from study of footwear in ancient texts and art, suggests that their main association is with female journeys connected to nuptial symbolism. This interpretation also allows me to propose that the models are a type of bridal sandal , the first attested in Corinth and the first associated with an Archaic sanctuary.