Persephone Goddess of the Underworld

PERSE

Goddess of the Underworld

Persephone in the Underworld by Trung Cao

Introduction

In Greek mythology, Persephone, also called Kore or Kora (‘the maiden’), is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the under world after her abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld, with the approval of her father, Zeus. The myth of her abduction, her sojourn in the underworld and her temporary return to the surface represents her functions as the embodiment of spring and the personification of vegetation, especially grain crops, which disappear into the earth when sown, sprout from the earth in spring, and are harvested when fully grown. In Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a sheaf of grain. She may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades.

Persephone as a vegetation goddess and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated happy afterlife. The origins of her cult are uncertain, but it was based on ancient agrarian cults of agricul tural communities. In Athens, the mysteries cele brated in the month of Anthesterion were dedicated to her.

Her name has numerous historical variants. These include Persephassa and Persephatta. In Latin, her name is rendered Proserpina. She was identified by the Romans as the Italic goddess Libera, who was conflated with Proserpina. Myths similar to Persephone’s descent and return to earth also appear in the cults of male gods like Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, and in Minoan Crete.

Various Names

In a Linear Mycenaean Greek inscription on a tablet found at Pylos dated 1400–1200 BC, John Chadwick reconstructed the name of a goddess, *Preswa who could be identified with Perse, daughter of Oceanus and found speculative the further identification with the first element of Persephone. Persephona is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. The Homeric form of her name is Persephoneia. In other dialects, she was known under variant names: Persephassa, Persephatta, or simply Kore, "girl, maiden"). Plato calls her Pherepapha in his Cratylus, "because she is wise and touches that which is in motion". There are also the forms Peri phona and Phersephassa. The existence of so many different forms shows how difficult it was for the Greeks to pronounce the word in their own language and suggests that the name may have a Pre-Greek origin.

Persephatta is considered to mean "female thresher of grain"; the first constituent of the name originates in Proto-Greek "perso-" (related to Sanskrit), "sheaf of grain" and the second constit uent of the name originates in Proto-Indo European, from the root "to strike". A popular folk etymology is from pherein phonon, "to bring (or cause) death".

Persephone Greek Goddess Sticker by Jessica Lauser

Titles and Functions

The epithets of Persephone reveal her double function as chthonic (underworld) and vegetation goddess. The surnames given to her by the poets refer to her character as Queen of the lower world and the dead, or her symbolic meaning of the power that shoots forth and withdraws into the earth. Her common name as a vegetation goddess is Kore, and in Arcadia she was worshipped under the title Despoina, "the mistress", a very old chthonic divinity.

Goddess of the Underworld

In mythology and literature she is often called dread(ed) Persephone, and queen of the Underworld, within which tradition it was for bidden to speak her name. This tradition comes from her conflation with the very old chthonic divinity Despoina ("[the] mistress"), whose real name could not be revealed to anyone except those initiated into her mysteries.

As goddess of death, she was also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx, the river that formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld. In Homer's epics, she appears always together with Hades and the Under world, apparently sharing with Hades control over the dead. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus encounters the "dread Persephone" in Tar tarus when he visits his dead mother. Odys seus sacrifices a ram to the chthonic goddess Persephone and the ghosts of the dead who drink the blood of the sacrificed animal. In the reformulation of Greek mythology expressed in the Orphic Hymns, Dionysus and Melinoe are separately called children of Zeus and Perse phone. Groves sacred to her stood at the west ern extremity of the earth on the frontiers of the lower world, which itself was called "house of Persephone".

Her central myth served as the context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis, which promised immortality to initiates.

The Abduction od Persopine Alessandro Allori

Goddess of Spring and Nature

Plutarch writes that Persephone was identified with a spring season and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, her return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of immortality, and hence she was frequently repre sented on sarcophagi.

In the religions of the Orphics and the Platonists, Kore is described as the all-pervading goddess of nature who both produces and destroys everything, and she is therefore mentioned along with or identified as other such divinities including Isis, Rhea, Ge, Hestia, Pandora, Artemis, and Hecate. In Orphic tradition, Persephone is said to be the daughter of Zeus and his mother Rhea, rather than of Demeter. The Orphic Persephone is said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus, Iacchus, Zagreus, and the little-attested Melinoe.

Nestis

In a Classical period text ascribed to Empedocles, c. 490–430 BC, describing a correspondence among four deities and the classical elements, the name Nestis for water apparently refers to Persephone: "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enliv ening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moist ening mortal springs with tears."

Of the four deities of Empedocles' elements, it is the name of Persephone alone that is taboo— Nestis is a euphemistic cult title—for she was also the terrible Queen of the Dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was euphemistically named simply as Kore or "the Maiden", a vestige of her archaic role as the deity ruling the underworld. Nestis means "the Fasting One" in ancient Greek.

Persephone, 1912 John William Waterhouse

“Kore is described as the allpervading goddess of nature who both produces and destroys everything.”

PERSEPHONE: Goddess of the Underworld

A Vengeful Queen

Hades did not make any of his extramarital affairs a secret. Typically, his affairs would not bother Perse phone, but when Minthe arrogantly bragged that she was more beautiful than Persephone and that she would win Hades back, Persephone took revenge. Persephone turned Minthe into what we know today as the mint plant.

While it was not Persephone’s choice to be abducted by Hades and tricked into marrying him, she took her new role as queen of the underworld seriously. As queen of the underworld, Persephone has the ability to send beasts to kill those who had wronged her.

In the myth of Persephone and Adonis, Perse phone and Aphrodite had both fallen in love with the mortal man Adonis. Zeus ordered Adonis to split his time between Aphrodite and Persephone. Adonis would spend time on the earth with Aph rodite, and then he would go to the underworld to spend time with Persephone.

One day, Adonis decided he did not want to return to the underworld and wanted to stay with Aphrodite. When Persephone found out, she sent a wild boar to kill Adonis. Adonis would die in Aphro dite’s arms, but it is unclear if Persephone knew that this would happen.

Persephone II Adrienne Stein

PERSEPHONE: Goddess of the Underworld

Mythology

Persphone's abduction by Hades is mentioned briefly in Hesiod's Theogony, and is told in consid erable detail in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Zeus, it is said, permitted Hades, who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to abduct her 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 Pallas, daughter of Triton, as the Homeric Hymn says, in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Demeter, when she found her daughter had disap peared, searched for her all over the earth with Hecate's 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, eventu ally 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.

Hades complies with the request, but first he tricks Persephone, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Hermes is sent to retrieve her but, because she had tasted the food of 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. With the later writers Ovid and Hyginus, Persephone's time in the under world becomes half the year. It was explained to Demeter, her mother, that she would be released, so long as she did not taste the food of the Underworld.

Various local traditions place Persephone's abduction in different locations. The Sicilians, among whom her worship was probably intro duced 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 abduction, and the Eleusinians men tioned 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 abduction in Attica, near Athens, or near Eleusis. The Homeric hymn men tions the Nysion (or Mysion) which was probably a

PERSEPHONE: Goddess of the Underworld mythical place. The location of this mythical place may simply be a convention to show was intended in the remote past.

Before Persephone was abducted by Hades, the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd Eubuleus saw a girl in a black chariot driven by an invisible driver being carried off into the earth which had vio lently opened up. Eubuleus was feeding his pigs at the opening to the underworld, and his swine were swallowed by the earth along with her. This aspect of the myth is an etiology for the relation of pigs with the ancient rites in Thesmophoria, and in Eleusis.

In the hymn, Persephone eventually returns from the underworld and is reunited with her mother near Eleusis. The Eleusinians built a tem ple near the spring of Callichorus, and Demeter establishes her mysteries there.In some versions, Ascalaphus informed the other deities that Perse phone 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 Perse phone. On an Attic red-figured bell krater of c. 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.

The 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia Suda introduces a goddess of a blessed afterlife assured to Orphic mystery initiates. This Macaria is asserted to be the daughter of Hades, but no mother is mentioned.

Bean artwork done for 2019 Arches of Easter festival in San Biagio Platani Artist Uknown

Interpretation of The Myth

The abduction of Persephone is an etiological myth providing a explanation for the changing of the seasons. Since Persephone had consumed six pome granate seeds in the Underworld, she was forced to spend six months or half of the year with Hades. When Persephone would return to the Underworld, Demeter’s despair at losing her daughter would cause the vegetation and flora of the world to wither, signifying the Autumn and Winter seasons. When Persephone’s time is over and she would be reunited with her mother, Demeter’s joyousness would cause the vegetation of the earth to bloom and blossom which signifies the Spring and Summer seasons. This also explains why Persephone is associated with Spring: her re-emergence from the Underworld signifies the onset of Spring. Therefore, not only does Persephone and Demeter’s annual reunion symbolize the changing seasons and the beginning of a new cycle of growth for the crops, it also symbol izes death and the regeneration of life.

In another interpretation of the myth, the abduction of Persephone by Hades, in the form of Ploutus, represents the wealth of the grain contained and stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (pithoi) during the Summer seasons (as that was drought season in Greece). In this telling, Perse phone as grain-maiden symbolizes the grain within the pithoi that is trapped underground within the realm of Hades. In the beginning of the autumn, when the grain of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter. This interpretation of Persephone's abduction myth symbolizes the cycle of life and death as Persephone both dies as she (the grain) is buried in the pithoi (as similar pithoi were used in ancient times for funerary practices) and is reborn with the exhumation and spreading of the grain.

Arcadian Myths

According to the Greek tradition a hunt-goddess preceded the harvest goddess. In Arcadia, Demeter and Persephone were often called Despoinai. They are the two Great Goddesses of the Arcadian cults, and evidently they come from a more primitive reli gion. The Greek god Poseidon probably substituted for the companion of the Minoan Great goddess in the Arcadian mysteries. In the Arcadian mythos, while Demeter was looking for the kidnapped Perse phone, she caught the eye of her younger brother Poseidon. Demeter turned into a mare to escape him, but then Poseidon turned into a stallion to pur sue her. He caught her and raped her. Afterwards, Demeter gave birth to the talking horse Arion and the goddess Despoina ("the mistress"), a goddess of the Arcadian mysteries.

Persephone-Hades Claudia N N

PERSEPHONE: Goddess of the Underworld