Demeter and Iasion
Demeter unites with the mortal Iasion in a ploughed field, and their son Plutus becomes the divine personification of wealth.
The Story
Iasion was a mortal hero associated with the goddess Demeter.
In an important early tradition, Demeter and Iasion came together in a field that had been ploughed three times.
Their union produced Plutus.
Plutus became the divine personification of wealth and abundance.
His birth gave the story a strongly agricultural meaning.
The wealth represented by Plutus was not originally simply money or treasure.
It was the prosperity produced by fertile land, successful harvests and the abundance that agriculture could create.
Demeter was the goddess of grain and cultivated fertility.
Her relationship with Iasion therefore joined divine agricultural power with the worked earth itself.
The story does not end happily for Iasion in every tradition.
Zeus learned of the union.
In the Odyssey, the relationship between Demeter and Iasion is followed by Iasion's death at the hands of Zeus.
Later traditions vary in their treatment of exactly why Zeus acts and how the relationship developed.
Plutus, however, remained.
Through him the union of Demeter and Iasion became permanently connected with the idea that true wealth rises from fertile land.
Key Figures
Why It Matters
The myth links Demeter directly with agricultural abundance beyond the Persephone cycle and explains the parentage of Plutus, whose earliest concept of wealth is closely tied to the productivity of the earth.
Traditions & Variations
Hesiod names Plutus as the son of Demeter and Iasion, while Homer refers to their union in a thrice-ploughed field and the death of Iasion by Zeus. Later sources expand the genealogy and circumstances of the relationship.