Demeter acts as the provider of food and the protector of marriage. She presides over the cycle of life and death through the harvest.
The Seasons
Her daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades. In her grief, Demeter neglected the earth, causing a great famine (winter). Zeus intervened, and it was decreed that Persephone would spend part of the year in the Underworld (winter) and part with her mother (spring/summer).
Primary Sources
Historical texts and references
“I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess—of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer.”
