Triptolemus, in Greek myth, the young man chosen by the goddess Demeter to go about the world and teach men the skills of agriculture, in some accounts identified with the child whom Demeter tried to make immortal. His parentage is variously described: he is said to be the son of the hero Eleusis (after whom the town was named), or, in Orphic literature, of Oceanus and Gaia (Earth). He was the recipient of sacrifice at Eleusis, where the Greek traveller Pausanias reports having seen his temple. Probably because of his Orphic connections Plato made him, with Minos and Rhadamanthys, judge of the dead in the Underworld.

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