Ceres

Pluto seized Proserpina as she gathered blue violets and white lilies near Lake Pergusa. A wood surrounded the lake and shaded its waters from the sun. Flowers grew there throughout the year. Proserpina filled her basket and gathered flowers in her lap. She tried to collect more than her companions, so she moved farther among the flowers. Pluto suddenly carried her away before she could return to them.

The earth opened beneath him. The god of the underworld charged out in a chariot drawn by horses. He caught Proserpina and drove her into the depths below the earth. She cried out in fear and called repeatedly for her mother, Demeter. Her cries travelled across the land and reached Demeter, who heard that her daughter had vanished.

Demeter left the assembly of the gods and began to search for Proserpina. She wandered across the whole world, driven by grief and anger. She fasted and wore her hair untied. She carried flaming torches as she travelled over land and sea. She searched through fields, woods, mountains, and shores, but she found no trace of her daughter. The search continued as Demeter crossed the world, looking for Proserpina, whom Pluto had taken into the underworld.

Demeter held Demophon over a fire at night to burn away his mortality. Metaneira entered the hall before the rite ended and cried out. The child was consumed by the flames. Demeter then gave Triptolemus, Demophon’s brother, a gift in compensation. She taught him agriculture, the use of the plough, and the cultivation of grain. She also gave him seeds of wheat and a chariot drawn by winged dragons.

Triptolemus was the son of Celeus and Metaneira, who lived at Eleusis. Demeter had come there while she searched for Persephone, whom Pluto had carried away. After Zeus arranged for Persephone to spend part of each year with Demeter, Demeter agreed to return from Eleusis. Before she left, she instructed Triptolemus, along with Eumolpus and Celeus, in the rites and gifts that she had brought to the land.

Triptolemus climbed into the dragon-drawn chariot and travelled through the air. Demeter ordered him to sow grain in newly broken ground and in fields that had already been tilled. He flew across Europe and Asia and reached Scythia. There, King Lyncus received him as a guest and asked who he was and why he had come. Triptolemus answered that he came from Athens and carried Ceres’s gifts. When those gifts were sown in fertile fields, they produced harvests and better food.

In one telling, Triptolemus first sowed barley in the Rharian plain and then spread the cultivation of grain across the earth. In another, Demeter gave him the chariot and wheat seeds after the death of Demophon. Triptolemus carried out her command, and grain cultivation spread through the world.