Celeus

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Celeus was the king of Eleusis, a town in Attica, and the husband of Metaneira. In Greek myth, his household received a guest who looked like nothing more than an old woman. The king welcomed her anyway. That kindness set in motion a story about immortality, a ritual left unfinished, and the origins of farming in Greece. It also raises questions about the king himself. What did his name mean? Why do the ancient sources disagree about his children? And what became of a ruler whose generosity changed the whole country, yet who still met a violent end?

  43

• 2. Names and Daughters

  ›

  The Greek verb keleuō, meaning to command or to urge on, lies behind the name Celeus. The writer Robert Graves suggested a stranger set of meanings: a burner, a woodpecker, or a sorcerer. Each reading hints at a different side of the king, from ruler to fire-tender to magician. His daughters are named differently depending on who tells the tale. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter lists four of them: Callidice, Demo, Cleisidice and Callithoe. Pausanias gives another set of three: Diogeneia, Pammerope and Saesara. The two lists share no names at all. Whichever list a listener prefers, these young women return near the end of the story, and their fate is not a happy one.

  342

• 3. Keeper of the Rites

  ›

  Diocles, Eumolpos, Triptolemus and Polyxeinus stand beside Celeus in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as the first priests of her cult. Together they were among the first people to learn its secret rites. Those rites became the Eleusinian Mysteries, the best-known worship of Demeter. The king of the town was therefore also one of its founding ritual figures. His role was religious as well as political. One name on that priestly list, Triptolemus, also appears as a son of Celeus, and his story comes later.

  4

• 4. A Stranger at the Hearth

  ›

  Doso was the name the old woman gave, and it was a disguise. Beneath it, Demeter was wandering in search of her missing daughter. Celeus gave the stranger a generous welcome and asked her to nurse his youngest son, Demophon, whom Metaneira had borne him. Demeter wanted to repay that hospitality with the greatest gift a goddess could give. Her plan was to make the boy immortal. Each night she would burn away his mortal spirit in the family hearth. One night Metaneira walked in and interrupted the ritual, and the process could not be completed. Demophon stayed mortal. The goddess, still looking for a way to thank the household, turned to another of the king's sons.

  453

• 5. The Gift of Grain

  ›

  Triptolemus, the other son of Celeus, received the knowledge that his brother never got. Some traditions assign him different parents, but in this telling he belongs to the king's family. Demeter taught him agriculture. From him, the rest of Greece learned to plant crops and to reap them. He crossed the land on a winged chariot, while Demeter and Persephone looked after him. Their care helped him finish his mission of teaching farming to the whole country. A failed rite of immortality thus became the starting point for everyday bread across Greece.

  43

• 6. War With Athens

  ›

  Erichthonius killed Celeus during a war against Athens. The sources give no further detail about the fighting. The king who had hosted a goddess died in an ordinary conflict between neighbors. His daughters mourned him. Demeter then changed them into doves, so the household that sheltered her was remembered in the form of birds.

  6