Pygmy (Greek mythology) Pygmy (Greek mythology) The Pygmies ( "Pygmaioi", from the adjective πυγμαῖος from πυγμή "pygmē", "the length of the forearm") were a tribe of diminutive humans in Greek mythology. According to the Iliad, they were involved in a constant war with the cranes, which migrated in winter to their homeland on the southern shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus. One story describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, and was transformed into a crane. In art the scene was popular with little Pygmies
Ceres (mythology) among the Dii Consentes, Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter, whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature. Ceres' name derives from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root "*ḱerh₃-", meaning "to satiate, to feed", which is also the root for Latin "crescere" "to grow" and through it, the English words "create" and "increase". Roman etymologists thought "ceres" derived from the Latin verb "gerere", "to bear, bring forth, produce", because the goddess was linked to pastoral, agricultural and human fertility. Archaic cults to Ceres are