The Name of Demeter Thesmophoros

' , , ' ,
,
,
Hymn. Hom.Cer. 1-3

Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of grain agriculture, lost

her daughter Kore to Hades, God of the Underworld, who carried
her off to become his Queen, Persephone. When Demeter
discovered what had happened, she went into mourning and in her
anger caused the earth to become barren. Demeter thus starved
gods and men alike, mounting an effective resistance to the will of
Zeus, who had given Hades permission to marry the maiden. The
final resolution of the crisis, decreed by Zeus, provided that
Demeter would regain her daughters company for at least part of
the year, even though Persephone became Hades Queen in the
Underworld for two-thirds of the year, descending and ascending,
as some would have it, with the seed in fall and the sprouting grain
in spring. The myth is most fully told in the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter cited above, although it is known from other sources.1
After the joyful reunion of the Two Goddesses, Demeter rewarded
humankind for their services to her when she wandered the earth
disguised and in mourning. She gave them the knowledge of grain
agriculture as well as the revelation of her secret rites, awful
secret rites which no one may, in any way, transgress or pry into or
utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. 2
Demeter is characterized by many titles in cult inscriptions
and mythological literature, but her epithets generally fall into two
categories, those of her two gifts, as described by Isocrates:
Demeter moved to kindness towards our ancestors by services
which may not be told save to her initiates, gave these two gifts,
the greatest in the world--the fruits of the earth, which have
enabled us to rise above the life of the beasts, and the
(initiation) which inspires in those who partake of it sweeter hopes
regarding both the end of life and all eternity. 3
1Clem. Al. Protr. 2.17.1-2; Hymn.Orph. 18, 29, 40, 41; Hes. Theog.
912-914; Paus. 8.15, 1-4, 8.42.1-4.
2 Hymn. Hom. Cer. 476-79: ...,
.
.
3 Isoc. Paneg. 28:
, ,
, , ,
, ,

..

One of the least well understood of all her titles is ,

an epithet related to her oldest festival, the Panhellenic .
The use of the name for Demeters sanctuary or for a
building within her sanctuary is attested in almost every city or
hamlet settled by Greeks throughout the Mediterranean and Black
Sea coasts. Demeter shared this epithet with her daughter KorePersephone, who is frequently depicted in art as her youthful
double; the two are shown holding identical attributes: grain
sheaves, pomegranates or other fruit, piglets and/or torches. 4
Greek divine epithets had a tendency to proliferate over time;
in part this was due to the demands of poetry for name-epithet
combinations in the proper meter, to begin or to complete the
metrical line.5 Epithets also apparently arose out of religious
experience: prayer and ritual called forth adjectives descriptive of
the powers of the deity invoked. Epithets also arose from the
worshippers need to express the deitys local connection, whether
geographical or genealogical, and the aspect of his personality
manifested in a particular cult.6 Descriptive epithets such as
Athena Glaukopis (grey-eyed) or Demeter Euplokamos (fair-tressed)
are to be found in literary rather than ritual contexts. Cult
inscriptions employ such functional titles as Zeus Georgos (Farmer),
or Ge Kourotrophos (Nurse), to make it clear what role the deity is
filling in a particular ritual situation. 7
The most common epithets of Demeter describe her as the
goddess of grain agriculture and the giver of cereal plenty, in terms
so plain as to be almost crude. She is Amallophoros, bringer of
sheaves, Anesidora, bringer up of gifts, Chloe, the green shoot,
Drepanephoros, sickle bearer, Epogmios, of the furrow, Eukarpos,
of good crops, Haloas, of the threshing floor, Himalis, of
abundance, Ioulo, of barley, Karpophoros, bringer of crops,
Likmaia, the winnower, Malophoros, fruit bearer, Megalartos, of
the big loaf, Megalomazos, of the big porridge, Ompnia, of grain,
Polysoros, rich in grain-heaps, Pyrphoros, torch-bearing, Sito,
grainy, and Soritis, of the grain-heap.8
4 For examples of these representations of the Two Goddesses, see T.
Hadzisteliou-Price, Double and Multiple Representations in Greek Art and
Religious Thought, JHS 91 (1971) Pl. II.3, VI.15-16, VII, VIII and IX; K. Kerenyi
Eleusis. Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (New York 1967) 27-29, 123124 discusses their iconographic duality.

5 OCD3, s.v. epithets, divine; Burkert 1985, p. 184 and note 14.
6 On the concept of divine personality, see C. Sourvinou-Inwood,
Persephone and Aphrodite at Locri; a Model for Personality
Definition, JHS 98 (1978) 101-21
7 LSCG 52.12; Paus.1.22.3.
8 Demeter epithets are collected in K. F. H. Bruchmann, Epitheta
Deorum quae apud poetas graecos leguntur (Leipzig 1893) 75; L. R.
2

She is called Chthonia and Chamyne, of the earth, as the

goddess of the underground realm, from whence crops spring up;
the Underworld is also the abode of the dead, the kingdom of
Hades. Demeter shares this double motif of death and fertility with
her daughter Kore/Persephone, (Queen of the
Underworld). 9
Demeter was known in Arcadia under two enigmatic titles,
Melaina, black, and Erinus, angry. hese names are associated with
the Arcadian myth of Demeters rape by Poseidon when both had
assumed equine form. This encounter resulted in the birth of a
daughter, Despoina (Mistress, a title of Kore-Persephone), as well
as a horse, the legendary Arion.10 The titles Melaina and Erinus are
seen as relics of a very old form of Demeter cult, partly because of
their location in Arcadia, that most archaic region, and partly
because of their association with xoana, unimaginably ancient
wooden statues. The incoherence of the myth has given
investigators the notion that it derives from an ill-remembered but
antique rite.11
Demeters most famous epithet, Eleusinia, is often assumed
to derive from the name of the deme of Eleusis in Attica, site of her
famous Eleusinian Mysteries. However, this does not explain its
early use elsewhere, apparently implying Demeters role as
patroness of mysteria without any geographic reference. 12 The
epithet has been said instead to be derived from the stem -

Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States Vol. 3, Cults of Demeter

(Oxford 1906) 31-38, 311-325; M. P. Nilsson,Griechische feste der
Religise Bedeutung (Leipzig 1906: repr. Stttgart 1957) 311-312;
H. Usener, Gotternamen; versuch einer lehre von der religisen
begriffsbildung 2nd ed., (Bonn 1929) 242-47; M. H. Jameson, The
Hero Echetlaeus, TAPA 82 (1951) 59, n.24; S. G. Cole, Demeter in
the Ancient Greek City and its Countryside, in S. Alcock and R.
Osborne, eds., Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in
Ancient Greece (Oxford 1994) 201-202.
9 Farnell 1906, 48-49; Hymn. Orph. 29.6.
10 Demeter Erinys in Thelpousa: Paus. 8.25.3-7; Demeter Melaina in
Phigalia:Paus. 8.5.8, 8.37.1-9, 8.42.1-13.
11 Cole 1994, 202; Jost, M. Mystery Cults in Arcadia, in M.B.
Cosmopoulos, ed., Greek Mysteries. The Archaeology and Ritual of
Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London and New York 2003) 155-57.
12 N. D. Robertson, New Light on Demeters Mysteries: the Festival
Proerosia, GRBS 37 (1996) 377-8 and note 158; InThe Two
Processions to Eleusis and the Program of the Mysteries, AJP 119
(1998) 570, Robertson argues that the title Eleusinia appeared early
in the Dark Age.
3

meaning go or come, in reference to a religious procession. 13

Demeter seems unlikely as the goddess of processions, and for one
of her most important festivals to be named for a mundane
element characteristic of every deitys celebrations would be
surprising. Like Demeter Eleusinia, Demeter Thesmophoros
association with (initiation) or (secret rites) is
strong.14 I shall attempt to show in what follows that her title
Thesmophoros describes Demeter as the revealer of the ritual laws
of and in addition to her role as the bringer of crops
and cereal agriculture.15
Demeter and Kore-Persephone16 share the epithet
Thesmophoros, which frequently appears in the dual without either
of their names.17 Ai theai, the Two Goddesses, in the dual, is an
expression for Demeter and Kore; the dual is not standard for other
divine pairs.18 By the Two Goddesses was apparently an oath
particularly favored by women, to judge from its appearance in the
speech of Aristophanes female characters. 19 The two are referred
to as the Demeters,20 or the double-named goddesses. 21
The dual number is a common feature of Indo-European
grammar, serving the purpose of indicating more than one but less
than three subjects or objects.22 In Homeric epic dialect the dual
was an inheritance from Aeolic usage,23 used for heroic pairs such
as the Moliones.24 Attic Greek employed the dual into the 4th
century BC, although it was limited to a few traditional expressions.
The use of the dual may be an indication that the title
13 Robertson 1998, 571 and note 71.
14 See below 19-20.
15 Farnell 1906, 75-83.
16 On the myth and cult of Kore-Persephone, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1978 and A.

Suter, The Narcissus and the Pomegranate. An Archaeology of the Homeric Hymn
to Demeter (Ann Arbor, MI 2002).

17 Ar. Thes. 83: , 282: , 295:

; App. B.Civ. 2.70; Plut. Dio 56: .
18 IG II2 661.28: ; Andoc. 1.125: ; Ar. Vesp. 378:
; CIG 1449: ; Callim. Aet. Fr.1.10:
] .
19 Ar. Lys. 112: ; Ar. Eccl. 155, 532: .
20 M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen religion, 2nd ed.
(Munich 1955) vol. 1, p. 463: ; LSS 95: .
21 Eur. Phoen. 683:
.
22 L. R. Palmer, the Greek Language (Oxford 1980) 268; W. W.
Goodwin and C. B. Gulick, Greek Grammar (New York 1930) 38,
201.
23 G. M. Bolling, On the Dual in Homer, Language 9 (1933) 298.
24 Il.11.709: .
4

Thesmophoros and the ritual of the Thesmophoria were at least as

old as the conventions of epic diction.25
The Thesmophoria was the most wide-spread festival of
Demeter, attested in more than thirty cities and communities in
Greece, Sicily, Southern Italy, Asia Minor, Scythia and even North
Africa, many of which show extensive remains of a Thesmophorion
sanctuary and epigraphic evidence of Demeters title
Thesmophoros.26 The universal spread of the festival name and the
epithet in Greece is an argument for its existence before the
founding of colonies in the eighth century BC or even the
population movements of the eleventh century BC; its appearance
in the literature of the archaic period is another. Kevin Clinton has
argued convincingly that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, whose
composition is usually dated in the seventh century BC, refers to
the institution of this festival, not to the origin of the Eleusinian
Mysteries.27
The nature of the Thesmophoria festival is clear from ancient
descriptions of the three-day festival as it was observed at Athens,
as well as at many other locations.28 A striking feature of the
Thesmophoria, as of other Demeter festivals, was that only women,
and probably only citizen-wives, were allowed to participate. 29 The
rituals were organized and performed by the women of the
community, even though the Thesmophoria was recognized and
supported by the city-state. 30 The ceremonies were performed by
25 Hadzisteliou-Price 1971, 51, insists that this title is not found in
the dual before the 4th century.
26 A list of Thesmophorian sites is found in Nilsson 1906, 313-316;
also in Farnell 1906, 328-332 ; for Attica, see K. Clinton, The
Thesmophorion in Central Athens and the celebration of the
Thesmophoria in Attica, in R. Hgg, ed., The Role of Religion in the
Early Greek Polis (Stockholm 1996) 111-125.
27 K. Clinton Myth and Cult. The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries
(Stockholm 1992) 28-36, but cf. Robertson 1996, 358-379.

28 The ancient sources are reproduced in Farnell 1906, 83-97, and

in L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin 1932; repr. Darmstadt 1969)
50-60; See also R. Parker Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford
2005) 272-75; M. Dillon, Girls and Women in Classical Greek
Religion (London and New York 2002) 110-120.
29 On the personnel of the festival, see Deubner 1932, 54; A.
Brumfield, A Crowd of Vulgar Revellers; the Thesmophoriazousai at
Athens, in B. G. Wright, ed., A Multiform Heritage (Atlanta, GA
1999) 1-9; Parker 2005, 270-72.
30 Whether the women performed blood sacrifice has been
debated. See M. Detienne, The Violence of Well-born Ladies:
Women in the Thesmophoria, in M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant,
5

women alone inside the walls of the sanctuary. 31 Men were

forbidden to take part in this womens festival; they were not to
learn the womens secrets.32 Aristophanes Thesmophoriazousai
(women celebrating the Thesmophoria) gets much of its comic
point from this restriction, as Euripides male relative Mnesilochus
must undergo cosmetic procedures and dress in womens clothes in
order to spy on the thesmophoriazousai.
The purpose of the rituals observed by the women was
essentially to guarantee the fertility of the earth and produce a
good harvest. The secluded women observed mourning, especially
on the middle day, the day of fasting.33 They observed food taboos
and purificatory customs, sleeping on willow branches on the
ground, wearing no flowers, and maintaining celibacy. 34 An
important part of the ritual was the Aischrologia, obscene and
abusive jesting,35 whose origin some would explain by Demeters
encounter with Iambe in the Homeric Hymn, where Iambe, with
many a quip and jest made the mourning mother laugh and break
her fast.36 Ritual obscenity has been interpreted as fertility magic
here, as in the myth it restores the grain goddess to normal
functioning.37
The document which has gained a central place in all
interpretations of the meaning of this festival is a tenth century AD
scholion which has dominated the discussion since its publication in
1870. 38 The probable author of the scholion, the learned Arethas,
bishop of Caesarea, relied on Hellenistic sources to reveal what
purports to be the closely guarded secret of the Thesmophoria, the
ritual performed by the women inside the sanctuary.39 Probably on
eds., The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (Chicago 1989)
129-145 and Parker 2005, 278-80.
31 The virtual seclusion required by sanctuaries of Demeter
Thesmophoros is demonstrated in Cole 1994, 213.
32 Called , , and even . See A. Brumfield,
Aporreta: Verbal and Ritual Obscenity in the Cults of Ancient
Women, in R. Hgg, ed., The Role of Religion in the Early Greek
Polis (Stockholm 1996) 67-74.
33 Ar. Thes. 985, 1150; schol. Ar. Thes. 376.
34 Schol. Soph. O.C. 681; Plin. H.N. 24.59. See Parker 1983, 82-83.
35 Phot. s.v. [sic]; Hesych. s.v. , ; Diod. Sic.
V.4; Clem. Al. Protr. 2.21.1; Theodoret Gr. Aff. Cur. 3.84.
36 Hymn. Hom. Cer. 203.
37 Deubner 1932, 53; Brumfield 1996.
38 Rohde 1870, 548-60.
39 Schol. Luc. Dial. meret. ii.1: H. Rabe, ed., Scholia in Lucianum
(Leipzig1906) 275-6; N. J. Lowe, Thesmophoria and Haloa. Myth,
Physics and Mysteries, in S. Blundell and M. Williamson eds., The
6

the day of fasting in the middle of the festival, women called

antletriai (bailers) descended into certain sacred underground
chasms or megara (rooms), where they retrieved the decomposed
remains of sacrificed piglets mixed with phallic cakes and pine
shoots, all of which had been deposited underground at an earlier
unspecified time. This mixture was deposited on the altars outside
the sanctuary for general use. The farmers believed that mixing
some of this divine compost with their seed before sowing
guaranteed a good harvest.40
The ritual seems to be a fairly straightforward attempt to
magically stimulate the fertility of the earth. Modern commentators
on the ritual, as well as on the details known about the
Thesmophoria from other cities,41 have usually followed Frazers
view that the Thesmophoria was a sowing festival which stimulated
the fertility of the earth, even if few have fully embraced his theory
of the death and revival of the vegetation god.42
Human and animal fertility was also celebrated. The last day
of the festival, the Kalligeneia (good births) featured sacrifice and
feasting by the women, organized by the archousai, the female cult
officials in the demes.43
The Thesmophoria was held at a time appropriate to its
function as a pre-sowing ritual intended to guarantee that the rains
would arrive on schedule and continue in proper proportion so that
the seed would germinate and not dry out or be eaten by pests. 44
Hesiod stipulates the setting of the Pleiades in early November as
Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece (New York and London
1998) 165-170.
40 On the ritual see Lowe 1998, pp. 149-173; Parker 2005, 272-275.
Robertson 1996 argues that the rotted remains were brought up,
not at the Thesmophoria, but at the later Proerosia.
41 Paus. 9.8.1: In a ritual for Demeter and Kore at Potniae in
Boeotia, piglets were thrown alive into underground megara.
42 J. G. Frazer, s.v. Thesmophoria, Encyclopedia Britannica 26
(1911) 11th ed., 838-40. For a discussion of Frazers theories, see J.
Z. Smith, When the Bough Breaks, History of Religions 12 (1973)
342-71.
43 Schol. Ar. Thes. 80, Phot. s.v. ; LSS 124; Isae. 3.80,
8.19; According to W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, MA
1985) 244 note 31, Kalligeneia was a goddess existing only in
ritual, not an epithet of Demeter; may have been
originally a neuter pl. festival name: Alciphr. 3.39.
44 The Attic cult calendar of Demeter placed strong ritual emphasis
on this time of year. See A. Brumfield The Attic Festivals of Demeter
and their Relation to the Agricultural Year (New York 1981) 54-69
(Proerosia), 207-222 (Mysteries).
7

the time to begin sowing.45 In Athens the Thesmophoria were held

in the fall, at the time of the sowing of grain and other field crops,
during Pyanopsion (October-November).46 In most cities the festival
was held in the fall at sowing-time, although a few Thesmophoria
were in summer.47 As long as the rites were held before the sowing,
which could span a month or more, they would be effective. In the
ancient Greek climate, the plowing and sowing usually began in
late October and the operation could last as long as a month. 48
Modern explanations of the significance of the Thesmophoria
have usually centered on its obvious connection to fertility. Human
and animal fertility undoubtedly played a role, although it can be
overstated.49 The theory that the Thesmophoriazousai attempted to
manage their own reproductive powers by employing contraceptive
or abortifacient herbs in the ritual seems unlikely. 50
The Thesmophoria has also been seen as a political event, the
womens celebration as a virtual assembly where the city of
women performed masculine rites of blood- sacrifice: the feminine
character of the festival served to conceal the political dimension of
the Thesmophoriawhere the city became the exclusive property
of the women.51 The emphasis on the seditious nature of the
festival does not actually derive from the demeanor of the
Thesmophoriazousai, or from the festivals general atmosphere, but
has perhaps more connection with modern theories about the
45 Hes. Op. 384.
46 Schol. Ar. Thes. 80, 834; IG II2 674. Brumfield 1981, 78-9, 233-35.
On the sowing-time in Greece, see H. Forbes, Strategies and Soils,
Diss. Anthropology (U. Penn. 1982) 230-289; Hes. Op. 615-16; Plut.
Mor. 565B.
47 Akragas, Sicily: early summer (Polyaenus Strat. 5.1); Alexandria, Egypt:
September (Polyb. 15.29.8; Schol. Aratus Phaen.); Delos: Metageitnion (BCH 27,
1903); Ephesus: summer (Hdt. 6.16); Gambreion, Mysia: Thargelion (LSAM
16);Herakleia, Latmos: Thesmophorion= Metageitnion (Rehm, Milet I n. 150);
Rhodes: Thesmophorion= Pyanopsion. Syracuse: sowing-time (Diod. Sic. 5.4);
Thebes: summer (Xen. Hell. 5.2.29); Cole 1994 p. 203.

48 Brumfield 1981, 19-24; L. Foxhall, Womens Ritual and Mens

Work in Ancient Athens, in R. Hawley and B. Levick, eds.,Women in
Antiquity (London and New York 1995) 103.
49 S. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge 1999) 99:
the principal fertility at stake was human.
50 L. Nixon, The Cults of Demeter and Kore, in Hawley R. and B.
Levick, eds., Women in Antiquity (London and New York 1995) 88:
Kalligeneia may refer to births that were beautiful because they
were chosen.
51 M. Detienne, The Violence of Well-born Ladies: Women in the
Thesmophoria, in M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, eds., The Cuisine
of Sacrifice among the Greeks (Chicago 1989) 133, 145.
8

empowerment of ancient women.52 The evidence indicates that the

women mourned and observed archaic taboos and customs; we do
not hear that they enacted murderous fantasies. 53
Leaving aside extremes of interpretation, the most coherent
and sensible arrangement of the basic elements of the
Thesmophoria has been provided by Robert Parker, in the following
order: 1. the Thesmophoria related to the fertility of the fields 2.
the Thesmophoria related to the fertility of women3. the
Thesmophoria served to define the status of citizen women. 54
Whatever was the symbolic, expressive function of the
Thesmophoria ritual, it also served a practical purpose for the
community, which believed that the mixing of the rotted piglets and
cakes with the seed of wheat and barley would ensure a good
harvest and that the grueling work of plowing and sowing, whose
success or failure would not be apparent for months to come, did
not go for naught. The womens ritual activities ensured the
success of the mens agricultural work.55
The meaning of Demeters title Thesmophoros has been much
debated. Clearly it depends on an understanding of the word
. Linguistic authorities derive the word from , to put or
set down. Thesmos is therefore that which is laid down, a law or
ordinance, as it appears in such compounds as
(lawgiver), (lawmaker an Athenian official),
(justice), and (guardian of the law).56 The more
commonly used word for law is nomos, man-made conventional law
which can be altered to accommodate new circumstances; thesmos
is an ordinance revered for its divine origin and great antiquity.
52 The title of Winklers chapter expresses it: The Laughter of the
Oppressed, in J. J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The
Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York
1989); according to J. N. Bremmer the Thesmophoria was the
great womens festival, when men were excluded from sex and
sometimes, if only symbolically, from power. J.N. Bremmer, Greek
Religion (Oxford 1994) 19.
53 The bizarre episode when Battus, King of Cyrene, was unmanned
by women wielding sacrificial knives records the punishment of a
sacrilegious intruder, not a political revolution. (Suda s.v.
, ) It is a singular mythic event on which
entirely too much theorizing has been hung. See Detienne 1989,
129-130.
54 Parker 2005, pp. 275-6.
55 Foxhall 1995, 106; Robertson Festivals and Legends: the
Formation of Greek Cities in the Light of Public Ritual (Toronto 1992),
xiii: festivals are bound up with practical needs.
56 Liddell-Scott s.v.
9

Thesmos appears once in Homer, where it refers to the

ancient law of the marriage-bed of Odysseus and Penelope. 57
Thesmos means divine law, the law of fate, or even the law of the
universe - what we moderns might call natural law.58 Such laws
are the oldest form of regulation, since they were instituted by
divinities.59 The Alexandrian philosopher Philo makes frequent use
of thesmos as a theological term: the divine unchangeable law of
the universe.60 The Church Fathers, beginning with Clement of
Alexandria, continue this usage; thesmoi are the laws of God or the
laws of the church.61
Thesmos can be used of human law, especially when it refers
to older laws such as those of Draco or Solon.62 Lexicographers and
grammarians define thesmos as ancient or divine law.63 The
related adjectival form means lawful, customary. The plural,
, means laws or rites.64
Demeters title Thesmophoros should therefore mean
lawgiver in some sense, and so it has been interpreted by
ancient65 as well as modern sources.66 The Lucian scholion, which
gives the most detailed information about the secret ritual,
explicitly informs us that Demeter is named Thesmophoros since
she established laws or thesmoi according to which men must work
to get their food. 67 The interpretation of thesmoi as the laws of
57 Hom. Od. 23.293.
58 Hdt. 3.31: ; Pl. Phdr. 248c: .
59 Ar. Av. 331; Xen. Cyr. 1.6.6; Aesch. Eum. 391; Ath. 9.23; Soph.
Ant. 800.
60 Philo Leg. 68.2: ; de Opificio Mundi
143.4, de Abrahamo 276.3, de specialibus legibus 2.13.7.
61 Clem. Al. Strom. 7.3.16.
62 Draco: IG I2 115.20, Paus. 6.11.6, And. 1.81, Arist. [Ath.Pol.] 4.1.
Solon: Sol. 36.18 (PLG), Plut. Sol. 19.5
63 Hsch. s.v. . , s.v. . ; Phot.
s.v. ; Suda s.v. ; Herodian 56.14; Chrysippus Fr. 337.7;
Harp. 152.13.
64 Phot. s.v. . ; Hsch. s.v. . ; Hdt.
1.59; Eur. Tro. 267; Aesch. Eum. 491; Soph. Aj. 712; Arist. Pol. 3.4;
IG 3 713.6: dedication to an Eleusinian temple attendant who
rescued the secret rites undefiled:
.
65 Callim. Hymn. 6. 19: ; Diod. Sic.
5.5.
66 Farnell 1906, 78; Price 1999, 100.
67 Schol. Luc. Dial. Meret. 2.1, Rabe 1906, 276:
,
.
10

marriage and procreation have been popular in recent years. 68

Others have seen Demeter Thesmophoros as the patroness of
legitimate marriage and motherhood.69
An ingenious theory as to the meaning of the festival name
and the title of the two goddesses was advanced by J. G. Frazer,
who agreed that the thesmoi should be things laid down, from the
verb , but argued that the things in question were not laws
or any abstraction, but were the rotted pieces of piglet and cake
which the antletriai put underground at one time of year and then
set down on the altars at the Thesmophoria.70 He considered
therefore that the epithet derived from the name of the festival,
which was derived in turn from certain striking ritual activities
which characterized it.71 By analogy with such festival names as
Oschophoria, which refers to the carrying of grape-bunches, or the
Arrephoria, which involved the carrying of secret objects, the name
of the Thesmophoria is derived from the carrying of the holy
compost, the decayed pigs, cakes and pine shoots which have been
set down in the underground rooms or megara. Frazers theory
thus eliminates the possibility that Demeters title Thesmophoros is
descriptive of her nature, that the thesmoi represent anything
abstract. Instead Thesmophoros is a title derived from the ritual of
her festival.
Another view taking thesmoi to be concrete objects argues
that the Thesmophoria was named for the processional carrying of
thesmoi, the baskets which the women carried up to the sanctuary
in procession.72 Yet the name of these baskets is known; they were
.73 Yet the festival is not called the Kistaphoria.
68 L. Bruit Zaidman and P. Schmitt Pantel, Religion in the Ancient
Greek City (Cambridge 1992) 188; R. Parker, Miasma. Pollution and
Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford 1983) 82; Nixon 1995,
76; E. Simon, Festivals of Attica (Madison, WI 1983) 21.
69 Detienne 1972 p. 156-8 Demeter Thesmophoros stands for marriage and
legitimate unionthe epithet refers to the precepts (thesmoi) relative to social
life and female fecundity.

70 Frazer 1911, 840.

71 For ritual as the source of the names of festivals, shrines and
epithets: Robertson 1998, 570, 1992, xiii-xv; J. Mikalson, Ancient
Greek Religion (Malden, MA 2005) 144. That ritual, sometimes
misunderstood, was the origin of myths in ancient religions was a
conviction shared by Frazer, J. E. Harrison and other members of
the early 20th century myth and ritual school. See H. S. Versnel
Myth and Ritual in L. Edmunds ed., Approaches to Greek Myth
(Baltimore 1990) 30-31
72 Robertson 1998, 566, 570 and note 68 on and .
73 Ar. Thes. 284; Simon 1983, 18-19
11

Both explanations encounter a stumbling block in the fact that

the Thesmophoroi are the two goddesses, not the human ritual
performers. The women who bring up the rotted remains (
) from the are called , a name which
derives from their function as balers of liquid.74 The women who
perform rituals and carry baskets up to the sanctuary, are called
thesmophoriazousai, women attending the Thesmophoria. These
women are not Thesmophoroi.
A further problem is that festival names ending in phoria
rarely refer to the activities of divinities, nor do they derive from
divine epithets. The young men who carry bunches of grapes in
procession in the Oschophoria are the oschophoroi; the young girls
who carry the secret objects (arreta) down to the sanctuary of
Aphrodite in the Arrephoria are the arrephoroi. There is no Apollo
Oschophoros or Athena Arrephoros.
Demeters titles often combine a concrete object with the
ending
phoros, as Amallophoros, Pyrphoros, Drepanephoros, Malophoros
or Karpophoros.75 Yet the combination of an abstraction with
phoros, such as Thesmophoros is not unheard of: Demeter is also
Horephoros, bringing the season, Zeus is called Dikephoros,
justice-bringer and Telesphoros all-powerful. 76 Athena is
Nikephoros, bringer of victory, and a festival called Nikephoria was
celebrated in her honor at Pergamum, a clear example of a festival
name derived from a divine epithet.77 For a divinitys epithet ending
in phoros to signify the carrying of objects in a procession of
mortal worshippers of that divinity would be a curious
development.
An additional problem is that the thesmoi, if they are the
rotted piglets and cakes, are not carried in procession, but are
pumped or baled from underground megara or chasms inside
the sanctuarys walls, in a secret rite performed and witnessed by
women alone. Is it likely that Demeters common epithet
Thesmophoros, her festival Thesmophoria and her sanctuary
Thesmophorion, all should refer to this obscure rite? It is hard to
explain the popularity of Demeters epithet Thesmophoros, in cultic
and literary contexts, if it referred only to a specific ritual action,
where women carried baskets or rotting organic matter.

74 Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon 9th edition (Oxford 1996) s.v.

. The verb denotes the pumping or baling of liquid,
particularly foul liquid such as bilge-water.
75 Bruchmann 1893, 75.
76 Aesch. Ag. 503; Hymn. Hom. 23.2.
77 LSAM 12. 11,19.
12

Farnell argues that the explanation compost-bearer for

Thesmophoros should also explain Demeters Arcadian epithet
.78 This epithet has nothing to do with carrying objects in
procession. The temple of Demeter near Pheneus was
established by locals in commemoration of their welcome of
Demeter as she wandered in search of her daughter. A was
held there.79 Demeters title thesmios (also an epithet of Apollo)
should be related to the words and , fixed, settled,
lawful.80
Demeters Thesmophorion sanctuary was the site for many of
her festivals; in Piraeus the Thesmophorion hosted the Skira,
Kalamaia, Plerosia and whatever other day the women gather
according to custom.81 The Thesmophorion was not reserved
solely for rituals concerned with the fall sowing, but was used at
numerous crucial moments of the agricultural year, when the
sequestrated women celebrated or secret rites. The
Thesmophorion was often the primary Demeter sanctuary in a city
and could not be reserved solely for the Thesmophoria festival, any
more than the Eleusinion was reserved for the Eleusinian Mysteries
only. The Eleusinion in Eleusis was the site of other Demeter
festivals, such as the Haloa or Thesmophoria. 82 Local deme
sanctuaries in Attica served for various Demeter rites. 83 Although
local Thesmophorian rites were performed in Attic deme
sanctuaries, the national Athenian celebration is thought to have
been held in the City Eleusinion.84 It seems that any Demeter
sanctuary was suitable for the womens Demeter mysteries, no
matter the goddess epithet.85
78 Farnell 1906, 76.
79 Paus 8.15.1-4.
80 Liddell-Scott 1996, s.v. ; see note 64 above.
81 LSCG 36. 10-12; J.Mikalson, Religion in the Attic Demes, AJP 98
(1977) 426, 428.
82 Schol. Luc. Dial. meret. Rabe 1906, 280, l. 12-13; IG II2 1672.124.
LSCG 7.
83 R. M. Simms, The Phrearrhian Lex Sacra; an Interpretation,
Hesperia 67 (1998) 101; Dillon 2002, 116-118.
84 Ar. Thes. 278 refers to the site of the plays action as the Thesmophorion. On
the location of the Athenian Thesmophorion see O. Broneer, The Thesmophorion
in Athens, Hesperia 11 (1942) 250-274; H. A. Thompson, Pnyx and
Thesmophorion, Hesperia 5 (1936) 151-200; Clinton 1996, 124-5; M. M. Miles,
The City Eleusinion. The Athenian Agora, vol. 31 (Princeton, NJ 1998) 22-23
follows Clinton in placing the celebration of the national Thesmophoria in the
Eleusinion at Athens.

85 On the relation of deme sacrifices to state celebrations see

Mikalson 1977; on the function of the Thesmophorion, see
Robertson 1992, 20 and note 59
13

If, as seems most likely, the name of the festival derives from
Demeters epithet thesmophoros, we need to examine possible
meanings of thesmophoros other than bearer of compost. The
title thesmophoros is frequently translated legifera, law-giver, a
role unsuitable in the extreme for Demeter, most un-political of
goddesses.86 Demeter does not appear in battle, either in epic tales
or in a mystic vision, as do other gods and heroes, even tender
Aphrodite.87 She plays no role in the assemblies of men; she is not
the patron deity of any city-state except perhaps Eleusis, itself
engulfed by Athens in the Archaic period.88
Demeter and Kore are not the bringers of the laws of marriage
and civilized procreation. Marriage is not an institution with which
Demeter is concerned; it is, rather, the domain of Hera, goddess of
marriage and wife of Zeus, Father of gods and men. Hera is a
sponsor of beauty contests for young girls and is associated with
Aphrodite in promoting marital union. Heras festival, the
Theogamia, presents her union with Zeus as the ideal marriage. 89
Demeter, on the other hand, is violently opposed to the marriage
arranged for her daughter by Zeus, who permits his brother Hades
to abduct or rape her; according to the mythological accounts
Demeter is not herself a member of a legitimate marital union, but
suffers various sexual assaults by divine beings.90 Zeus begets
Persephone upon her, 91 Poseidon mates with her when she
assumes the form of a mare to escape his advances, 92 and she
yields to the Titan Iasion in the thrice-plowed field. 93
A thesmothetes was a human lawgiver, an official of the
Athenian city-state. The title thesmophoros has nothing to do with
the human political realm, but expresses the aspect of Demeter in
which she fixed, once and for all time, the rules of the most
important and oldest ritual known to human kind, the laws of
agriculture and of the (initiation), the mysteries by which
agricultural and human fertility were assured.

86 Levin 1991, 1-12; cf. Farnell 1906, 75, 79.

87 Hom. Il. 16.788-92 (Aphrodite on the plain of Troy); Jameson
1951 (the agricultural hero Echetlaeus at Marathon); Hdt. 8.66-7 (a
mystical Iacchus procession in the Thriasian plain).
88 J. S. Clay, The Politics of Olympus (Princeton 1989); Richardson 1974, 9.
89 Deubner 1932, 177-8.
90 Serv. Virg. Aen. 4.58 on Ceres opposition to the institution of
marriage.
91 Clem. Al. Protr.2.15.1: Zeuss wanton embraces of his mother,
and the wrath of Demeter.
92 Paus 8.5.8, 8.25.4, 8.42.1-13.
93 Hom. Od. 5.125
14

Demeters title thesmophoros was not only associated with

agriculture but also with mysteries and initiation. Herodotus
described the Thesmophoria as the of Demeter.94 At Pheneus
in Arcadia a was held in the secluded temple of Demeter
, established by those Pheneatians who welcomed Demeter
as she wandered looking for Kore.95 In the Attic deme Phrearrhioi a
was celebrated for Demeter Thesmophoros.96 On Mykonos,
only those women who had been initiated ([]) could join
in Demeters festival.97
The argument has been made here that both Demeters
ancient title Thesmophoros and the name of her festival
Thesmophoria refer to her function as the goddess who reveals to
mankind secret rites which produce abundant agricultural yields, a
function which in ancient Greece, as elsewhere, was considered
vital to the communitys survival. In support of this conclusion as to
the meaning of the epithet Thesmophoros, we have eliminated the
meanings which the title cannot bear: Demeter cannot be a giver of
human law, the goddess of marriage or the goddess who presides
over childbirth; nor can she be seen as the goddess of family life.
Neither can the Thesmophoroi be properly described as the bearers
of cult objects of any sort, whether rotted piglets or baskets.
Demeters myth makes clear her connection with grain
cultivation and with secret rites, both of which she revealed to
humankind.98 The importance of these two revelations is
highlighted by her festivals close relation to the yearly cycle of
cereal agriculture and by their emphasis on secluded women
performing secret rituals.
It would be anachronistic to regard Demeters gift of the
knowledge of grain cultivation as merely a technology transfer. By
revealing the secrets of growing grain for bread the staff of lifeDemeter allowed man to become civilized, to become fully human;
as Isocrates eloquently expresses it, she enabled us to rise
above the life of the beasts. Or, according to the Lucian scholion:
she established laws or thesmoi according to which men must
work to get their food. 99 To express her role in anthropological
94 Hdt. 2. 171.
95 Paus. 8.15.1-5; IG 3 713.6. see note 64 above.
96 E. Vanderpool, A Lex Sacra of the Attic Deme Phrearrhioi,
Hesperia 39 (1970) 47-53; Simms, 1998, 92-107.
97 LSCG 96.22: [].
98 Whether in Eleusis, in Sicily or in Arcadia, the hospitality of
humans is rewarded with the gift of the : Hymn.Hom.Cer.;
Diod. Sic. 5.4.3; Ov. Met. 5.391; Paus. 8.15.1.
99 Isoc. Paneg. 28; schol. Luc. Dial. meret. 2.1, Rabe 1906 276, l.
26-28.
15

terms, Demeter is the goddess of the Neolithic; her gift of

agriculture enabled mankind to abandon the nomadic hunting life
and settle in permanent communities, no longer wandering like the
beasts of the field. This new way of life introduced by Demeter was
not merely a new way of catching or finding food, but a means for
man to produce his food himself, to control the processes of the
planting and cultivation of the crops.
In this way humanity came of age when agriculture was
introduced; cities, governments, laws, writing, elaborate
monuments, state religious institutions, all the developments of
civilization flowed from the densely settled populations that only
became possible with the introduction of intensive agriculture in
the Neolithic.
Why did the Greeks imagine that it was a goddess rather than
a god who invented agriculture, if it was men who were universally
considered to
possess the physical strength to control the plow? It was not
necessarily because women discovered the domestication of plants,
as some would argue,100 but because the female sex were believed
to know the secrets of fertility. In an important paper in 1974
Ortner argued that womans perceived innate powers of fertility
make her symbolic of natural and animal fecundity in many
cultures.101 Yet the conclusion that woman represents the mute and
brute animal domain while man represents the cultural enterprise
of transforming and controlling that domain is not quite accurate
with regard to the religious role of ancient women.102 Greek women
were seen, by their nature, as maintaining close contact with the
most ancient and awesome divine powers of the earth and the
afterlife. Anthropological studies of modern Greek village life agree;
women are seen as guardians of the familys spiritual life, a role for
which their nature makes them suitable.103 There is no
100 Jane Ellen Harrison explicitly connected the Thesmophoria to
the Neolithic, when women supposedly invented agriculture and
hog-raising: Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion 3rd ed.
(Cambridge 1922) 272.
101 S. Ortner, Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? in M. Rosaldo and L.
Lamphere, eds., Woman Culture and Society (Stanford, CA 1974) 67-88.

102 The harlot in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, written ca.

2500 BC, is archetypal of womans civilizing role: by introducing
Enkidu, the half-man, half-beast, to sexual intercourse as well as
the use of clothing, wine and bread (Neolithic foods), she makes it
impossible for him to commune with the animal herd. He must go
to Uruk, contend with Gilgamesh and become a civilizing hero. See
N. K. Sandars, tr., The Epic of Gilgamesh (London 1960)60-63.
103 E.g. S. Greger, Village on the Plateau (Studley, Warwickshire
1985).
16

contradiction between womans fertility role and her elevated

spiritual role. Just as the knowledge of agriculture given by Demeter
distances humans from the animal world, so knowledge of her
secret rites has the potential to bring the human closer to the
divine.
Demeters second gift is the mysteries, the secret rites of initiation.
These rites connect to the chthonian realm in two ways: they relate
both to the souls of the dead in Hades and to the new shoots of the
grain poking up from under the ground. The life after death will be
sweeter for those initiated into mystery rites, where the goddess
appears symbolically in a threshed ear of grain.104
Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of these rites is that,
unlike all other known Greek rituals, they were not public
ceremonies attended by the entire citizen body of the polis, but
were secret. Any revelation of this secret was severely punished by
divine or human agency.105
Another characteristic of the mysteries of Demeter and Kore
was the exclusion of men, at least until the development of the
Eleusinian Mysteries, which made the rites more accessible, while
remaining unspeakably secret. The timing of the secret rites
performed by women to encourage the growth of field crops was
co-ordinated with the various masculine labors of the agricultural
year. The festival calendar recognized the particular strengths
specific to each sex and the need to channel the powers of both
into the production of bread.
Demeter Thesmophoros might therefore be translated as
bringer of agriculture and its secret rituals. The antiquity of
Thesmophoros is indicated by the widespread occurrence of the
epithet, the festival, the month and the Thesmophorion sanctuary.
The cult belongs to the early period of Greek religious development,
before the rise of the citystate and its political deities, Athena,
Hera, Zeus, and Apollo.106 Just as the women performers of her
ancient secret agricultural rites, as legal minors, had no political
role in the city state, so Demeter was not a political goddess even
104 Isoc. Paneg. 28: : Hippol. Haer. 5.8.39-40:

, .

105 Plut. Alc. 22; Thuc. 6. 18.27-28: Alcibiades and his confederates
are indicted by the Athenian court; Suda s.v. ,
: Battus, King of Cyrene, is attacked by the
Thesmophoriazousai; Hdt. 6.134-137: Miltiades is punished by gods
and men for his invasion of the Thesmophorion of Paros.
106 It is perhaps for this reason that Demeter, like Dionysus, is more
often recognized at the level of the deme in Attica than in state
celebrations. See Mikalson 1977, 429; Dillon 2002,116-118.
17

in her latest incarnations; she had no partisans in the political

sphere.

18