Who's Who Greek Myth: Demeter; goddess of grain and agricultural fertility

Sister of Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades and Hestia, Demeter was the goddess of grain and agricultural fertility, whose aid was invoked by farmers.

The myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone is a beautiful metaphorical account of the reason for the cycle of seasons, of winter and summer. Hades, ruler of the underworld (and one of Demeter's brothers) abducted Persephone one day when she was out in a field picking flowers, and took her to the underworld. Her disconsolate mother wandered earth and sea for nine days searching for her and finally rested and mourned her daughter in a palace at Eleusis.

Zeus sent a delegation of lesser gods to beg her to return and restore the earth to fertility, as the crops had failed and animals ceased to multiply for lack of interest on her part.

Her condition for complying was the return of her daughter to the upper world, upon which Zeus sent Hermes to ask this favor of Hades, who consented, but gave his wife a pomegranate seed to eat.

It was this seed that dictated her return to the underworld for one third of each year. Demeter is associated with the poppy, whose juice she used to soothe the pain of her daughter's abduction.

There are parallels with the story of Demeter in the mythology of western Asia, with growth and decay associated with the death and resurrection of a deity. Eleusis is the major Greek sanctuary associated with Demeter and Persephone, though its ruins are hard to appreciate in the midst of modern industrial surroundings.