Celeus

King of Eleusis at the time of Demeter's wanderings, and the first mortal initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries. His daughters met the disguised goddess at the Parthenion well and brought her home to their mother Metanira (*Homeric Hymn to Demeter* 98–117); Metanira gave Demeter the infant Demophon to nurse; Demeter would have made the child immortal by laying him nightly in the fire, but Metanira caught her at it and screamed, and the spell broke (*h.Cer.* 231–274). In the hymn's closing scene, after Persephone's return, Demeter teaches the rites to four founders together — Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus, and Celeus (*h.Cer.* 473–475) — without making any of them kin to each other. Eumolpus is the ancestor of the Eumolpid priestly line of Eleusinian hierophants (Pausanias 1.38.3 gives his independent descent from Poseidon and the nymph Chione), a separate founding figure rather than Celeus's son. Apollodorus (*Bibliotheca* 1.5.1–2) names Triptolemus as Celeus's son and as the grown youth to whom Demeter gives the chariot of winged serpents and the first seed of wheat.

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