
Like her other siblings but Zeus, she was swallowed by her father as an infant, and rescued by Zeus.īy her brother Zeus she became the mother of Persephone, a goddess of fertility. In Greek tradition, Demeter is the second child of the Titans Rhea and Cronus, and sister to Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Although she is mostly known as a grain goddess, she also appeared as a goddess of health, birth, marriage, and had connections to the Underworld. This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter ( / d ɪ ˈ m iː t ər/ Attic: Δημήτηρ Dēmḗtēr Doric: Δαμάτηρ Dāmā́tēr) is the Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over crops, grains, food, and the fertility of the earth.
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The story that Persephone spent four months of each year in the underworld was no doubt meant to account for the barren appearance of Greek fields in full summer-after harvest, before their revival in the autumn rains, when they are plowed and sown.

Because Persephone had eaten a single pomegranate seed in the underworld, however, she could not be completely freed but had to remain one-third of the year with Hades, and spent the other two-thirds with her mother. Zeus therefore intervened, commanding Hades to release Persephone to her mother. Upon learning of the abduction, her mother, Demeter, in her misery, became unconcerned with the harvest or the fruitfulness of the earth, so that widespread famine ensued. In the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter,” the story is told of how Persephone was gathering flowers in the Vale of Nysa when she was seized by Hades and removed to the underworld. Persephone, Latin Proserpina or Proserpine, in Greek religion, daughter of Zeus, the chief god, and Demeter, the goddess of agriculture she was the wife of Hades, king of the underworld. Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Pluto and Proserpina
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