Demeter eats Pelops 🍽️
“Ennaia—Herkynna, Erinys, Thourian, Sword-bearer—
once sliced up the flesh of your grandfather in her jaws
and buried it in her throat,
feasting on the cartilage of his shoulder.”
- Lycophron, Alexandra (C3rd B.C)
(For context: The first line lists multiple epithets of Demeter. The second says “your grandfather” because Cassandra, the narrator, is talking about Menelaus. Ergo, it can be simplified to “Demeter once sliced up the flesh of Pelops […]”)
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“When Pelops, son of Tantalus and Dione, daughter of Atlas, had been slain and cut up by Tantalus at a feast of the gods, Ceres ate his arm, but he was given life again by the will of the gods. When his other limbs were joined together as they had been, but the shoulder was not complete, Ceres fitted an ivory one in its place.”
- Hyginus, Fabulae (C2nd A.D)
—
“Tantalus, king of the Corinthians, was a friend of the gods. Since he often entertained them, and on one occasion provisions failed, he killed his son Pelops and served him to the gods as a meal. Then, while all the others refrained from eating, Ceres consumed his shoulder. When the gods wished, through Mercury, to restore him to the world above, an ivory shoulder was given back to him, as the poet says: "and Pelops, distinguished by his ivory shoulder." Ceres alone is said to have eaten because she herself represents the earth, which dissolves the body. Pelops is said to have been restored through Mercury because Mercury is the god of intelligence, by means of which philosophers discovered palingenesis (rebirth) or metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls).”
- Servius, Commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid 6.603 (C4th A.D)















