Chtonic Deities

Demeter and Persephone, mother and daughter, were called by the Greeks chthonic deities, which means deities of the earth; they protected the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of man. Their cult was widespread in Sicily, and in Akragas there were several shrines dedicated to the goddesses. A large sacred area destined to the cult of Demeter and Persephone, stretched in the western part of the hill of temples: it was organized in three adjoining terraces: the western, the so-called Terrace of donari, was designed between the late 6th and early decades of the 5th century BC almost exclusively donari and steles, of which there are traces in the rock. On the east terrace east there were small temples, fences and altars for the celebration of animal sacrifices, built from the first half of the 5th century BC. Inside It was built a peripteral temple in the fifth century BC, which means surrounded by columns, the so-called temple of Dioscuri. It was originally a peripteral hexastyle temple with 13 columns on the long sides. A partial reconstruction of four columns of the northwest side goes back to a restoration carried out by the Commission of Antiquities of Sicily in 1836 with relevant architectural elements in different eras. In the third terrace, east of Porta V, it was in the Archaic period a "lesche", a building for the shelter and hospitality. It was assumed that the entire area constituted one big sacred area, which had celebrated their tesmoforici cults, celebrated by women to propitiate fertility.