The figure is a woman holding an ear of grain, and her brightest star is Spica, the Latin for that ear, the Arabic al-Simak al-Azal. The Babylonian constellation here is MUL AB-SIN, the Furrow, associated with the goddess Shala, who is regularly shown holding a stalk of grain, so the harvest association is present from the earliest layer of the tradition and was not added by the Greeks.
Greek writers identified her variously with Demeter, with Persephone, with Astraea, the last of the immortals to leave the earth at the end of the golden age, and with Dike, justice, an identification that ties the sign to the neighbouring scales of Libra. The Christian tradition later read the figure as the Virgin, and medieval church calendars associated her feast days with this part of the year, an example of a much older sky-figure absorbing a new identification without changing shape.