Demeter and Dionysus seem a good place to start when thinking about the stories of gods and goddesses since they represent bread and wine. Both are gods of the earth, not quite so unpredictable as the immortal gods of Olympus whose capriciousness wasn't always in the best interest of humans.
Demeter (in Latin Ceres) is the Goddess of the Corn older than her counterpart Dionysus (also known as Bacchus). Since men went to war and women toiled in the fields it was only natural for the ancients to create a goddess to represent the corn harvest. Her temple was in a little town near Athens called Eleusis, where a great festival would take place every five years. It was a sacred festival, however, and the ceremony that would occur in the temple was surrounded in secrecy as those who took part in it weren't allowed to speak of it.
The Greeks would have worshipped Demeter; the ceremony was known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Roman, Cicero, wrote about them.
"Nothing is higher than these mysteries. They have sweetened our characters and softened our customs; they have made us pass from the condition of savages to true humanity. They have not only shown us the way to live joyfully, but they have taught us how to die with a better hope."
Although for hundreds of years the Eleusinian Mysteries were of great importance to men, over time they waned and died out, no doubt due to the secrecy in which they were shrouded and the festival of Dionysus would come to the fore.
Being gods of the earth they didn't enjoy the near perfect happy-go-lucky existence that the Olympian gods did. Their lives, like those of the Greeks were filled with their share of pain and suffering. Keeping in mind that the ancient Greeks created these myths to explain nature, while the gods may have reveled during the growing season and particularly during the harvest, the seasons change and darkness falls. The ancients came up with stories to explain what happens with the changing of the season. Now I'm getting to the good stuff--the stories themselves.
The myth of Demeter is one I have always remembered. Edith Hamilton writes that the story is told only in a very early poem, one of the Homeric Hymns dating from the eighth or beginning of the seventh century. Demeter had an only daughter named Persephone who was taken away by Hades to the underworld. Cast into grief she allowed the world to turn into a frozen, barren desert. Demeter sat in her temple on earth, not returning to Olympus. Finally Zeus had to step in and made his brother, Hades, relinquish Persephone but not before Hades made her eat a pomegranate seed. This ensured that she would return to him for at least part of the year. Hence the reason we have winter every year--Persephone has returned to her husband Hades in the underworld.
Dionysus is an altogether different kettle of fish. Unsurprisingly for the god of the vine (and wine) he has both a good and bad side to him. He is the only god who does not have two divine parents. Zeus was his father and a Theban princess named Semele his mother. Once again Hera was provoked by Zeus's infidelity and caused a rather unfortunate ending for Semele, but not before Zeus managed to snatch Dionysus away. Hamilton shares a couple of stories about him, which I think I won't recount here for fear of letting my post run on too long, but there are a few notable things about Dionysus that are worth knowing.
Dionysus was a god man worshipped and who could bring to them either "freedom and ecstatic joy or savage brutality. Throughout the story of his life he is sometimes man's blessing, sometimes his ruin." That probably sums up pretty tidily just how wine affects man. So Dionysus can either raise man to happy heights or destroy him. Because of Dionysus's ability to be either within man or outside of him, it brought on a new way of thinking. Man could become divine--"be possessed by a power greater than themselves" thanks to the god Dionysus. Not a claim the other gods could make.
"It is not known when the great change took place, lifting the god who freed them through inspiration, but one very remarkable result of it made Dionysus for all future ages the most important of the gods in Greece."
The festival of Dionysus became very important. It took place in spring when the vine began to bloom once again. It sounds like it was a pretty raucous time. Not only could people not be put in prison but some prisoner were let out to take part in the celebrations. The celebrations didn't take place in a temple or the wild wilderness, however.
"It was a theater; and the ceremony was the performance of a play. The greatest poetry in Greece and among the greatest in the world, was written for Dionysus. The poets who wrote the plays, the actors and singers who took part in them, were all regarded as servants of the god. The performances were sacred; the spectators, too, along with the writers and the performers, were engaged in an act of worship. Dionysus himself was supposed to be present; his priest had the seat of honor."
There was one more aspect of Dionysus--along with being an inspiration for men (good and bad), there was an assurance through him for man that death was not the end. His worshippers believed that the soul lives on forever, since he himself not only died (Hera's orders once again), but was brought back to life. I find this all very interesting. Even though Hamilton notes that the stories about the gods were just that and that the gods were not their religion, they still worshipped them and built temples and had festivals, so I'm curious what the delineation was. Mankind always likes being able to explain the world and what happens after death, and their worship of Dionysus sounds a lot like religion to me.
Next week an explanation on how the world and mankind were created!