Demeter
She was sister to Zeus, and goddess of fertility. She had various lovers, including her brother Zeus. One of her children was Persephone (by Zeus), who was carried off by Hades (god of the underworld), and in her grief, Demeter let the earth grow barren (winter) and only when Persephone was returned to her, six months of the year, did she let the earth become fruitful again (summer). Demeter is the goddess of the earth, of agriculture, and of fertility in general. Sacred to her are livestock and agricultural products, poppy, narcissus and the crane.
DIONYSUS
Son of Zeus and Semele, also known in both Greek and Latin as Bacchus. According to Ovid, when his mother was killed Zeus snatched her unborn child and sewed him into his own thigh. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysos gives variant versions of his birth. He is unusual in that he has a mortal mother, the story of Semele places his birth much later than those of the other gods. Several stories tell of the fate of mortals who refused to recognised or accept Dionysos, as in Euripides' Bacchae. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.5 and Homer, Iliad, 6 tell the story of Lykourgos, a Thracian king who tried to expel Dionysos and was driven mad. Homeric Hymn to Dionysos, 7 tells of the fate of mortals who failed to recognise him. He was captured by pirates but made a vine grow on the ship and transformed himself into a lion. The pirates ended up as dolphins. As these stories suggest, Dionysos is often depicted as travelling throughout Greece, often arriving from the east. As knowledge of the world to the east expanded with Alexander's campaigns as far as India, so did the regions from which Dionysos was thought to arrive in Greece. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods he was depicted as arriving in triumph from India, accompanied by exotic animals.
Dionysos is the god of wine and song and is usually depicted in art and literature accompanied by maenads, satyrs and silens. The maenads often carry parts of animals they have torn apart in their frenzy. This is how he is described by Catullus and Ovid when he arrives on the island of Naxos to rescue Ariadne.
At Athens tragedy was performed at the festival of Dionysos (Dionysia). The Anthesteria was a festival which commemorated the death of Ikarios the first man to introduce wine to Attica. His countrymen killed him when they felt the effects of the drink and thought he had poisoned them. Ikarios' daughter, Erigone, hanged herself .
Dionysos was also associated with resurrection. He is identified with Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone who was killed, dismembered and eaten by the Titans. His heart was saved and he was reborn through Semele.
Dionysos' connections with resurrection link him to Orpheus.
God of wine, son of Zeus and Semele, rescuer of Ariadne after she had been abandoned by Theseus. Dionysus also rescued his mother from the Underworld, after Zeus showed her his true nature as storm god and consumed her in lightning. It was Dionysus who granted Midas the power to turn whatever he touched into gold, then was kind enough to take the power back when it proved inconvenient.Bacchus
In Greek and Roman mythology, the god of wine and ecstasy, identified with Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, and Liber, the Roman god of wine. His followers were mostly women who celebrated in a rite that gave us the modern term Bacchanalia. His feasts were euphoria-filled revelries. The name Bacchus came into use in ancient Greece during the 5th century bc. It refers to the loud cries with which he was worshiped at the Bacchanalia.
Hades
He was one of the Olympian gods. He was the son of the Titans, Cronus and Rhea, and the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. When he and his brothers drew lots to divide the world after they had deposed of their father, Cronus, Zeus won command of the heavens, Poseidon of the sea, and Hades of the underworld. He became known as Pluto, the god of wealth, because of the precious metals in the Earth. It was rare for Hades to leave his realm to visit the Earth or Olympus. (His most famous visit to Earth was the time he saw Persephone and carried her off to be his wife.) Although he was a grim and pitiless god, unappeased by either prayer or sacrifice, he was not evil.
Cerberus
Hades' guard dog, a relative of both the Chimaera and the Hydra. Cerberus was carried up from Hades by Heracles in one his
Labors. This was achieved only after a protracted battle in which the hero was mauled by the hound's fangs and menaced by snakes growing from his back and tail. In contrast, Cerberus abandoned his watchdog task and lay down meekly to the strains of Orpheus's lyre when that minstrel journeyed to the Underworld in search of his dead wife Eurydice. The poison used in Medea's attempt to murder Theseus was made from Cerberus's drool.
