Food of the gods

so i know that ambrosia is the food of the gods but thats not what I'm asking.
i would like to know what food is associated with each god?
example:
Aphrodite - Olives, or at least olive tree. she created one in her "battle" with Poseidon.
Dionysus - wine, and in some stories the created of the nectar.

what are some others you guys can think of?
- it is also best if we limit it to ingredients, so i know Demeter is the goddess of bread but that is not an ingredient to something. she is the goddess of Flour so that is fine. i just can't find one for all the gods, heroes work as well.

what would be cool to is any heroes that have had a significant interaction with the nectar would be cool too.
ex: Achilles was bathed in the nectar to make him immortal but was stopped and his ankle or achilles was left out.
i know this is asking a lot but its for a project and this specific info is hard to search for.

thanks everyone who reads sand replies
 

Alejandro

Active Member
There was apparently a mysterious bean-hero! No, seriously, his name was Cyamites and you can read some more about him over here: http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/EleusiniosKyamites.html

According to this page>> http://rbedrosian.com/cruck.htm << the Argive hero Perseus was somehow associated with the wild mushroom :confused:


Actually it was Athena who had a contest against Poseidon in which she created the olive tree.

Although Demeter was the goddess of bread, I would say the deity whom you could much more closely associate with flour and with the process of baking it into bread is actually Demeter's sister Hestia, who personified the hearth and the oven in which the bread was made. Hestia was worshipped as the patron of cooking, especially bread-making.


According to Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica, it was actually ambrosia, rather than nectar, with which Achilles was anointed by his divine mother Thetis when he was a baby, and this was in combination with a fire in which she bathed him every night. One night the baby's father Peleus discovered his infant son "gasping in the flames" and he issued a terrible cry. At this, the goddess awoke, snatched up the child and cast him onto the floor (which I personally think is kinda weird, but oh, well...) before disappearing into the sea, never to return to her marriage home. According to Ptolemy Hephaestion, Thetis had borne Peleus six children before Achilles and each of these died in the fires in which she anointed them in her attempt to burn away their mortality. In Achilles' case, when Peleus botched this ritual, Achilles ankle got burned, and the Centaur Cheiron who eventually took up his training replaced the joint with that of a dead giant named Damysus. This is supposed to explain why Achilles was the fastest runner of his time, since Damysus, when he was alive, could run super-fast. (But there are other versions of the reason for Achilles' swiftness too.)

A more tragic story like this is that of a baby prince of Eleusis named Demophon, the youngest son of King Celeus and Queen Metaneira. When Demeter came to Attica in search of her abducted daughter Kore (who was soon to become Persephone), she was taken in as a guest of the Eleusinian royal family, and became the nurse of their newborn son, whom she breastfed and then weaned on ambrosia rather than the food of mortals. Like Thetis with her son Achilles, Demeter wished to make Demophon immortal, and performed the same procedure on this boy: bathing him in nocturnal fire while he was anointed with ambrosia. But Metaneira discovered Demeter apparently burning her baby and cried out, which interruption caused Demophon to die in the flames. To compensate the parents for this loss Demeter granted many favours to an older son of theirs named Triptolemus, whom she made her disciple to preach the sowing of the grain, and agriculture in general, around the world, furnishing him with a dragon-drawn chariot with which to accomplish this. Triptolemus supposedly invented the plough and, in a version in which his father was a man named Rharus, he first sowed barley in the Rharian Plain, which was named after his dad, after which he introduced grain cultivation all over the world. The Roman version of Triptolemus' childhood story says that he was the son of Eleusis, who, like Metaneira, interrupted Demeter while she was performing the ambrosial fire baptism on Triptolemus (rather than Demophon) to which intrusion the goddess responded by immediately killing Eleusis(!)... Yeep :eek:! Demeter is also supposed to have had a thing with Triptolemus (since they didn't keep their relationship strictly professional) and gave birth to his son Amphitheus, whose name means "Divine On Both Sides [of the family]."

Dionysus and Heracles managed to attain immortality as well as godhood through a combination of fire, ambrosia and other factors. Dionysus was sort of born dead when his father Zeus, clothed in his brilliant lightning-fire, burnt down the palace of the unborn child's grandfather Cadmus to the ground, with Dionysus' mother Semele inside it. Zeus ripped his unborn son from his mother's womb and sewed the foetus into his own thigh where it completed its gestation, feeding on the nectar and ambrosia in the god's system. So even though Dionysus' mother was mortal, he was given birth by his immortal father, in which manner he became a god in his own right.

When Heracles was a baby, Zeus tricked Hera into breastfeeding this stepson of hers. At Zeus' command, while Hera was asleep, Hermes put the infant Heracles at her bosom, on which the baby began to suck so hard that the goddess awoke in a fright, shoving the child away from herself with such force that the milk between her bosom and his mouth shot skyward, creating the Milky Way. Inadvertently, in spite of her hatred of the child, the first phase of his immortalisation was clarified with the ambrosia and nectar which he had ingested from Hera's milk. This immortalising would be completed when Heracles later burnt himself to death and was carried, leaving his mortal parts behind, into Olympus.

Britomartis, a daughter of Zeus (and also great-granddaughter of Demeter), was a goddess of hunting and nets using for fishing, fowling and the hunting of small game.

Demeter, Persephone and Hades, as chthonic divinities, each represented the fertility of the earth in some way: Demeter, together with Persephone's springtime aspect named Kore, representing the grain and its new sprouting at the end of winter; and Hades, sometimes depicted with a cornucopia (the horn of plenty), pouring fruit and fertility onto the earth.


According to Aaron Atsma, the author The Theoi Project website, "In the Cretan tradition, the Titanes [Titans] were portrayed as agrarian gods who lived in the vicinity of Knossos in Krete where they ruled over mankind during the Golden Age. At this time the Earth produced an endless bounty, and presented the Titans with the first sickle for the harvest. The Sicilian myths also speak of the Titanes harvesting the first grain." The aforementioned sickle is supposed to be same one which Cronus used as a weapon against his father Uranus, afterwards casting it into the Tyrrhenian Sea where it became the island of Drepane or Drepanum in Sicily. Apollonius Rhodius seems to be saying in his Argonautica that Uranus' blood which stained the sickle then impregnated the Sicilian Earth, which gave birth to the Phaeacians, a people later encountered by the Argonauts and by Odysseus. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Sicilians believed that Demeter and Kore made their first appearance on Sicily Island, which Zeus place had given as a wedding present to Persephone at her wedding to Hades. For these reasons the island was sacred to them, and on account of its soil's fertility and the goddesses' blessing, it was the first place in the world to produce corn. As evidence for fertility of the Sicilian soil, Diodorus quotes Homer's Odyssey when it says in the land of the Cyclopes (which I guess he understood to be in Sicily) wheat, barley and grapevines grow "unsown and even untilled" because Zeus blesses the land with rain.

The following food sources or ingredients were associated with the Greek gods as below.
  • Parsley and wild celery were sacred to Zeus and Poseidon. Ash trees, from which manna juice was made, were sacred to Zeus. Bulls were sacred to many gods including Zeus, Poseidon, Hades and the rivers.
  • The Grecian strawberry tree, the crocus or saffron, the ram and the rooster were sacred to Hermes. The rooster was also sacred to Helios.
  • The walnut tree, deer, wild boar, guinea-fowl and quail were sacred to Artemis.
  • Asphodel was sacred to Persephone, Hades and Hecate; and pigs (the raw ingredient for pork ;)) and spearmint were sacred to Demeter and Persephone. The fig tree was sacred to Demeter and Dionysus. Goats and cinnamon were sacred to Dionysus.
  • Apples and apple trees as well as myrtles, [prickly] lettuce, pomegranates, geese and hares were sacred to Aphrodite; apples, apple trees, pomegranates and heifers (young cows: a source of beef :cool:) were sacred to Hera. Lettuce was sacred to Hebe.
  • The almond tree was sacred to the Phrygian god Attis, who is supposed to have been born from an almond nut.
  • The lotus tree or date plum was sacred to Priapus.
  • The date-palm was sacred to Leto and Apollo. The roe deer was sacred to Apollo.
For references and more information on all this stuff, see these pages, if you like:
http://www.theoi.com/Flora1.html
http://www.theoi.com/Flora2.html
http://mythologyrules.tumblr.com/symbols-animals-plants

 
Last edited:

Alejandro

Active Member
There were minor gods quite similar to the Erotes (the little love-gods whom the Romans would call Cupids) who were named Karpoi, "Fruits," who personified grain and fruit, and often appeared in the company of the earth-goddess Gaia carrying baskets of fruit. There were four main Karpoi, and these represented the four seasons: Eiar (Spring), Theron (Summer), Phthinoporon (Autumn) and Kheimon (Winter). There was also a god of fruit named simply Karpos, who was the son of Zephyros (the West Wind) and Khloris (the goddess of flowers, whose Roman name was Flora). Karpo was originally a title of the goddess Demeter but eventually the Athenians worshipped her as a Hora (Season) together with other Horai who all represented an aspect of spring, the others being Thallo, the goddess of spring buds and new shoots, and Auxo or Auxesia, the goddess of spring growth.
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
The olive, or olive tree, is actually a symbol of Athena (for Aphrodite's, refer to Alejandro's post above), though it is also associated with Zeus (an olive branch from the wild olive tree that grew at the Temple of Zeus was the prize for the winner of the ancient Olympic Games); Dionysus, more specifically, had the grape vine; Artemis had the walnut, hazelnut and chestnut; the stag was sacred to Artemis, so maybe venison.

Hope this helps!

E. M.
 
Top