• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.51
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• pp.73-101
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• 2018

This essay deals with The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a aetiological myth about the Eleusis Mysteria. The narrative of the hymn shows how Demeter, the goddess of grain, became the deity of the Mysteria. In the hymn, Demeter is characterized as a mother: She is the mother of Persephone and the motherlike nurse of Demophone. As the mother of Persephone and Demophone, the roles of are nursing and mediating. She care her children and linked the earth and the world below, the heaven of gods and the earth of mortals. Demeter the deity of the Mysteria by a mother. The and the maternity of Demeter is connected with patriarchal politics. Demeter in the hymn is not so much the goddess who derived her character from The Great Mother as the goddess who had been characterized the influence of Greek-patriarchy.