Abduction myth
Persephone used to live far away from the other deities, a goddess within Nature herself before the days of planting seeds and nurturing plants. In the Olympian telling, the gods
Hermes and
Apollo had wooed Persephone; but Demeter rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of the Olympian deities.
[69] The story of her abduction by
Hades against her will, is traditionally referred to as the
Rape of Persephone. It is mentioned briefly in
Hesiod's
Theogony,
[70] and told in considerable detail in the
Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
Zeus, it is said, permitted
Hades who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to carry her off, as her mother
Demeter, was not likely to allow her daughter to go down to Hades. Persephone was gathering flowers with the
Oceanids along with
Artemis and
Athena—the
Homeric Hymn says—in a field when
Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth.
[71] Demeter, when she found her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth with torches. In most versions she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and in the depth of her despair she causes nothing to grow.
Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered the place of her abode. Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced
Hades to return Persephone.
[72]
Oil painting of Hades abducting Persephone. Oil on wood with gilt background. 18th century. Property of Missing Link Antiques.
Hades indeed complied with the request, but first he tricked her, giving her some
pomegranate seeds to eat. Persephone was released by
Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, but because she had tasted food in the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year (the winter months) there, and the remaining part of the year with the gods above.
[73] With the later writers Ovid and Hyginus, Persephone's time in the underworld becomes half the year.
[74]
Various local traditions place Persephone's abduction in a different location. The
Sicilians, among whom her worship was probably introduced by the Corinthian and Megarian colonists, believed that Hades found her in the meadows near
Enna, and that a well arose on the spot where he descended with her into the lower world. The
Cretans thought that their own island had been the scene of the rape, and the
Eleusinians mentioned the Nysian plain in Boeotia, and said that Persephone had descended with Hades into the lower world at the entrance of the western
Oceanus. Later accounts place the rape in
Attica, near
Athens, or near
Eleusis.
[72]
The
Homeric hymn mentions the
Nysion (or Mysion), probably a mythical place which didn’t exist on the map. The locations of this mythical place may simply be conventions to show that a magically distant
chthonic land of myth was intended in the remote past.
[20] Before Persephone was abducted by Hades, the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd
Eubuleus, saw a girl being carried of into the earth which had violently opened up, in a black chariot, driven by an invisible driver. Eubuleus was feeding his pigs at the opening to the underworld when Persephone was abducted by Plouton. His swine were swallowed by the earth along with her, and the myth is an etiology for the relation of pigs with the ancient rites in
Thesmophoria,
[75] and in
Eleusis.
In the hymn, Persephone returns and she is reunited with her mother near
Eleusis. Demeter as she has been promised established her mysteries (orgies) when the Eleusinians built for her a temple near the spring of Callichorus. These were awful mysteries, which were not allowed to be uttered. The uninitiated would spent a miserable existence in the gloomy space of
Hades, after death.
[76]
In some versions,
Ascalaphus informed the other deities that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds. When Demeter and her daughter were reunited, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for some months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. This is an
origin story to explain the seasons.
In an earlier version,
Hecate rescued Persephone. On an Attic
red-figured bell krater of ca 440 BC in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Persephone is rising as if up stairs from a cleft in the earth, while Hermes stands aside; Hecate, holding two torches, looks back as she leads her to the enthroned Demeter.
[77]
[edit]Pluto-Interpretation of the myth
Pinax of Persephone and Hades from Locri.
Reggio Calabria, National Museum of Magna Graecia.
In the myth
Pluto abducts Persephone to be his wife and the queen of his realm.
[79] Pluto (Πλούτων,
Ploutōn) was a name for the ruler of
the underworld; the god was also known as
Hades, a name for the underworld itself. The name
Pluton was conflated with that of
Ploutos (Πλούτος
Ploutos, "wealth"), a god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, and because
Pluto as a
chthonic god ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest.
[79] Plouton is lord of the dead, but as Persephone's husband he has serious claims to the powers of fertility.
[80]
The Greek version of the abduction myth is related to corn – important and rare in the Greek environment – and the return (ascent) of Persephone was celebrated at the autumn sowing.
Pluto (
Ploutos) represents the wealth of the corn that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (
pithoi), during summer months. Similar subterranean
pithoi were used in ancient times for burials and
Pluto is fused with
Hades, the King of the realm of the dead. During summer months, the Greek
Corn-Maiden (
Kore) is lying in the corn of the underground silos, in the realm of Hades and she is fused with Persephone, the Queen of the underworld. At the beginning of the autumn, when the seeds of the old crop are laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother
Demeter, for at that time the old crop and the new meet each other. For the initiated, this union was the symbol of the eternity of human life that flows from the generations which spring from each other.
[83][84]
[edit]The Arcadian myths
The primitive myths of isolated
Arcadia seem to be related to the first Greek-speaking people who came from the north-east during the
bronze age.
Despoina, (the mistress) the goddess of the Arcadian mysteries, is the daughter of Demeter and
Poseidon Hippios (horse), who represents the river spirit of the underworld that appears as a horse as often happens in northern-European folklore. He pursues the mare-Demeter and from the union she bears the horse
Arion and a daughter who originally had the form or the shape of a mare. The two goddesses were not clearly separated and they were closely connected with the springs and the animals. They were related with the god of rivers and springs; Poseidon and especially with
Artemis, the
Mistress of the Animals who was the first
nymph.
[2] According to the Greek tradition a hunt-goddess preceded the harvest goddess.
[85] In Arcadia,
Demeter and Persephone were often called
Despoinai (Δέσποιναι, "the mistresses") in historical times. They are the two Great Goddesses of the
Arcadian cults, and evidently they come from a more primitive religion.
[20] The Greek god
Poseidon probably substituted the companion (
Paredros, Πάρεδρος) of the
Minoan Great goddess[86] in the Arcadian mysteries.
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