Demeter, known to the Romans by the name of Ceres, belonged to the first generation of the gods of Olympus, like her brothers Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon and her sisters Hera and Hestia. Thus she was the daughter of Cronus, who swallowed her, and Rhea, alter ego of Cybele and Gaea, all of whom were identified with the Great Mother. While Gaea represented the primordial element and Rhea the power of generation, Demeter was the divinity of cultivated land and the goddess of grain. With the gift of agriculture and the foundation of civilization, Demeter also laid down the rules by which humanity should live and, as a consequence, its laws. In her dual aspect as Rhea-Demeter, the Orphic legends refer to her union with Zeus, which resulted in the birth of Kore or Persephone, Demeter's only child according to the classical tradition.
In legend, as in her cult, Demeter was closely bound to her daughter Persephone, who was abducted by Hades. In her desperate search for her daughter, Demeter left Olympus and renounced her divine functions, with the result that the earth grew barren and ceased to yield fruit until her daughter was returned to her, at least for part of the year. The ancients saw this myth as an implicit allusion to the cycles of nature, to the seasons, the harvests, and, in particular, the produce of the earth which spent part of the year hidden beneath its surface before blossoming and bearing fruit. There were also references (to which attention was drawn in more than one philosophical text and, in all probability, in the Mysteries as well) to the destiny of the human being, whose body, buried under the ground like Persephone, did not prevent the soul from attaining immortality in a continuous cycle of death and rebirth.
The central core of the legend of Demeter, whose significance was revealed only to initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries, was supplemented over the course of time by various secondary myths, such as that of her rape by Poseidon. Another legend relates that Demeter fell in love with Iasion and bore him a son called Plutus (Wealth). All the myths, however contradictory, are in agreement that she had no husband and that Demeter bore her children outside the ties of marriage.