Triptolemus

Eleusinian prince, son of Celeus and Metanira, and the first mortal to receive from Demeter the gift of cultivated grain. In the fullest account (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 1.5.1–2; Ovid *Metamorphoses* 5.642–661; Pausanias 1.14.2–3 + 1.38.6; Diodorus 5.4.6–7) Demeter gave him a chariot drawn by winged serpents and a sack of the first wheat-seed, and sent him out to fly over the whole earth teaching mortals the cultivation of grain. He travelled from Attica across the Greek world and as far as Scythia (where King Lyncus tried to kill him in his sleep and was turned into a lynx by Demeter, Ovid *Met.* 5.645–661), Sicily, and Africa. He became the first of the Eleusinian hierophants and, alongside Eumolpus, founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries; he was worshipped at Eleusis with his own sanctuary beside Demeter's. In the later Eleusinian art — the great Eleusinian relief of c. 440 BC — he sits between the two goddesses, a beardless youth receiving the ears of corn.

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