in Greek mythology, according to Homer and Hesiod, Cretan youth loved by Demeter, the corn goddess, who lay with him in a fallow field that had been thrice plowed. Their son was Plutus, the wealth within the soil. According to Apollodorus, Iasion attempted to ravish the goddess and was struck by lightning hurled by Zeus. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book IX, Iasion lives and Demeter is unsettled by his aging. Iasion perhaps originated as an ancient agricultural deity associated with a fertility rite. See also Demeter.