page_title: Demeter
section_title: On the Greek mainland
hierarchical_section_title: Demeter / Worship / On the Greek mainland
caption_attribution_description: Português: Museo Archeologico Regionale
context_page_description: In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito, "she of the Grain", as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros, "Law-Bringer", as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society.
  Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a religious tradition that predated the Olympian pantheon, and which may have its roots in the Mycenaean period c. 1400–1200 BC. Demeter was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele, and she was identified with the Roman goddess Ceres.
context_section_description: Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for "the Two Queens and Poseidon" ("to the Two Queens and the King" :wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te). The "Two Queens" may be related with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were no longer associated with Poseidon in later periods.
  Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Selinus, Tegea, Thoricus, Dion (in Macedonia) Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna (Sicily), and Samothrace.
  An ancient Amphictyony, probably the earliest centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele (Ἀνθήλη), which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly. This was the locality of Thermopylae.
  After the "First Sacred War", the Anthelan body was known thenceforth as the Delphic Amphictyony
  Demeter of Mysia had a seven-day festival at Pellené in Arcadia. Pausanias passed the shrine to Demeter at Mysia on the road from Mycenae to Argos but all he could draw out to explain the archaic name was a myth of an eponymous Mysius who venerated Demeter.
caption: Terracotta Demeter figurine, Sanctuary of the Underworld Divinities, Akragas, 550–500 BC
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