Hades and Persephone

***Miscellaneous Myths: Hades and Persephone*** is the sixty-second episode of the *Miscellaneous Myths* series by Red. It’s subject is the story of Persephone’s abduction by Hades from Greek mythology. The primary source of this myth is the *Homeric Hymn to Demeter*, of which Red gives a detailed summary, but she also goes on to talk about the origins of Hades, Demeter and Persephone, as well as that of their worship and cult in Ancient Greece and before, and how the story, themes and figures were changed over time to what we know and recognize today, not only within the Ancient Greek world, but also in our modern times and perspective.

## Summary

The video begins with Red bringing up an less than pleasant fact about ancient Greek myth, and that’s how relationships are “almost unilaterally really bad”. From Zeus and Hera to Apollo and even Dionysus there’s a great amount of lack of consent present in the stories, which she usually skips for the sake of making the videos light-hearted. She says however, that one god gets more backlash than he deserves, and that’s Hades, known for violently abducting Persephone into the Underworld. While other gods often have their more uncomfortable actions and stories glossed aside in order to make them more heroic and their relationships more loving, usually Hades is exempt from this. This brings up to the story of how Hades and Persephone got married, a myth recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, written around the 600s BC.

The hymn begins with Persephone in a field picking flowers when Hades scoops from the Underworld, snatches her and retreats back to the Underworld, while an all-knowing narrator informs us that this is all with Zeus’s knowledge and approval, as he didn’t believe Persephone’s mother, Demeter, would approve. Demeter is distraught when her daughter is nowhere to be found, and begins a great search. The goddess of witchcraft, Hecate, informs her that she heard Persephone screaming, and together they go find Helios, the Sun, who informs Demeter that it was Hades who abducted Persephone, but the blame lies on Zeus, who gave his blessing. He further says that Hades wouldn't make a bad son-in-law, as king of the Underworld, and eldest-born son of Cronus.

Demeter, however, is furious. She then disguises herself as an old woman and goes to Eleusis, where she becomes the wet-nurse for Demophon, the infant son of the king and queen. Demeter plans to make Demophon immortal, by throwing him into the fireplace, where the fire burns away his mortality little by little. But one unfortunate night, the queen, Metanira, catches Demeter setting the baby on fire, and is alarmed, disrupting the ritual. Demeter reveals her true identity, and order the people of Eleusis to build her a temple, where she eventually withdraws to sulk.

Demeter is still livid for the loss of her daughter, and thus, as goddess of agriculture, stops all plants from growing, plunging the world into famine and eternal winter, which ends up killing a lot of people. Zeus, alarmed, sends Iris to fetch her back, promising her lavish gifts, but none of them is Persephone, so Demeter declines, making Zeus despair.

Zeus eventually dispatches Hermes to the Underworld, to bring back Persephone. And Hermes does, finding Hades and Persephone hanging out, sitting on their thrones, with Persephone being bummed out and missing her mother. He explains the situation to them, thereupon Hades turns to Persephone and tells her that she ought to go to the surface to talk to her mother. He takes a minute to tell her that as his wife, she'll be a queen of queens and he'll strive to be a great husband for her. Overjoyed, Persephone prepares to leave, only for Hades to give her some pomegranate seeds to eat, which will prevent her from leaving forever - how this works exactly isn't clear, because that part of the hymn is torn.

Persephone goes back to Demeter, who is overjoyed to have her back. However Hermes and Persephone have to explain to her that Persephone cannot permanently leave the Underworld due to eating some of the pomegranate seeds, so she will have to split her time between her mother and her husband. Demeter is just happy to have Persephone back, and brings spring back to the world. Zeus shows up, and confirms Persephone’s situation. When she’s not around, Demeter gets sad and prevents the plants from growing; but when Persephone returns, she lets the world flourish again, the ancient Greek way of explaining the seasonal cycle. There the hymn ends.

Red then goes on to highlight some things; that the hymn goes out of its way to absolve Hades of all blame, piling it up on Zeus instead (depicted as the hands of Helios, Demeter and Hecate pointing a Zeus, who is eating a sandwich, while a “Real villain” sign hovers over him), except for the pomegranate. The idea of Hades as an evil kidnapper is a much later interpretation unsupported by the original story.

Another interesting thing is that Persephone is not really presented as a spring goddess; it’s Demeter who brings back growth to the planet, not Persephone's own ascension. Persephone isn’t the goddess of spring; what she is goddess of is the Underworld. This is supported by other texts, such as the Theogony, where Persephone is referred to as ‘dread Persephone’ (*ἐπαινῆς Περσεφονείης*). In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Persephone gets namedropped as such a lot, with Odysseus guessing that she is responsible for the ghosts he sees, quite far from “innocent flower goddess” Persephone is known as.

Red then goes on a Mycenaean dive; we have no evidence that Hades predates Ancient Greece, having found his name on not a single one Mycenaean record, while we know that Persephone does (and so does Demeter).  Zeus and Poseidon also have Mycenaean counterparts. The story of Persephone’s descent seems to predate Ancient Greece and Hades altogether; she then says that the role of the king of the Underworld seems to have been filled by Poseidon and furthermore he (as *wanax*) often appears together with Persephone and Demeter, meaning that perhaps they were worshipped together.

Demeter and Persephone were worshipped at Eleusis, as part of a mystery cult (of which we know little) and it’s been suggested that the cult derived from Mycenaean agrarian rituals. The theme of that cult seems to be the journey of Persephone; descent into the Underworld, staying there and ascending out of the Underworld to reunite with Demeter. Hades, although there, doesn’t appear to be central, as the cult centered on mother and daughter. He might not even have been in when the cult first started in Mycenaean times; a theme of descent into and ascent out of the Underworld is common in many cultures, but an abduction isn’t always present.

The focus then shifts to Arcadia, another major cult center of Persephone and Demeter, where they were worshipped as the *despoinai*, the mistresses, in which Hades didn’t factor much. In Arcadia, Persephone was also called Despoina, and was seen as the daughter of Poseidon and Demeter. Despoina is sometimes distinct from Persephone; Pausanias, who lived in the 200s AD, wrote that while Demeter was looking for Persephone, Poseidon, enamored with her, tried to woo her. Demeter turned into a mare, and Poseidon, as a horse, chased her, leading to the birth of Despoina and her brother the horse Arion. The Arcadian cults could well predate the Greek-speaking peoples of Arcadia, making Demeter and Despoina/Persephone the remnants of an ancient, scary divine duo.

What’s more, Persephone is usually referred to as Kore as well, especially before her abduction. Kore is a fertility and spring deity, like her mother, always referred in duo with Demeter, and is universally accepted to be Persephone. Both ‘Kore’ and ‘Despoina’ appear to be cases of a deity being called by anything other than their name, due to them being scary, in an apotropaic way. Underworld gods were seen as terrifying, and calling them by their name could draw their attention; so people would use euphemisms and nicknames instead. All these point to Persephone’s oldest form being horrifying.

While Persephone (and Demeter) has so many details in story and worship, a thousand years of secret mystery worship and core role in myths, Hades feels a lot simpler than her, seeing how he isn’t even the center of the myth of Persephone’s abduction, which centers on the mother-daughter dynamic. Based on this, Red theorizes that “Persephone, Dread Queen of the Underworld” is her oldest characterization, and everything else steams from the vagueness of people when talking about her. She also hypothesizes that Hades himself might originate as a form of Mycenaean Poseidon, who was originally the king of the Underworld, a side of himself which formed a separate god during the Greek Dark Ages. There isn’t some evidence of that however. In fact, lack of evidence has led to great misinformation about the story of Hades and Persephone, whether it’s a wildly violent kidnapping or as Persephone willingly descending into the Underworld and falling in love with Hades, often – erroneously – presented as the “original version” of the myth, which is very much isn’t.

Red then says that although the no-kidnapping version doesn’t exist and it’s sourceless, Hades and Persephone are the most functional couple in Greek myth; they share equal power and authority, they never cheat on each other, which is probably why this story is so popular among modern writers, many of which have put their own, personal spin of the myth in their retellings.

## Credits

In the credits, Red sings *Let it Snow*, and blames the Victorians for the popular image of the violent kidnapping, as they depicted Persephone as screaming and distraught while Hades carried her away.

## Characters appearing

Persephone

Hades

Zeus

Demeter

Hecate

Helios

Metanira

Demophon

Iris

Hermes

Despoina

Poseidon

## Notes

1. ↑ Red’s account of that passage is misleading; Hades and Persephone are not described as sitting on thrones, as she illustrated, but rather as sitting on a bed, heavily implying sexual intercourse having taken place. Furthermore, Persephone isn’t described as simply “bummed out” but as *unwilling*. This, in combination with the bed, and the fact that Persephone is know described as a ‘bed-mate’, as opposed to ‘maiden’ (*kore*), is why this story is interpreted as rape, in the common sense of the word, instead of simply kidnapping (*τέτμε δὲ τόν γε ἄνακτα δόμων ἔντοσθεν ἐόντα, ἥμενον ἐν λεχέεσσι σὺν αἰδοίῃ παρακοίτι πόλλ᾽ ἀεκαζομένῃ μητρὸς πόθῳ* – "there he found the lord in his palace sitting on a bed with his bashful bedmate, very much unwilling, longing for her mother"). Red says that "this part of the text is a bit garbled" and while it's true the text is lacunose, the actual lacuna is in a sentence that talks about *Demeter*, not Hades and Persephone; the text that describes them is perfectly preserved and reliable.
2. ↑ That’s not really true; the hymn doesn’t try to absolve Hades at all. Only Helios seems to blame Zeus (as he explains who gave the authorization for the kidnapping) while none of the others blame Zeus more than Hades; Hecate doesn’t even voice an opinion, whereas Demeter blames everyone. What the hymn actually goes out of its way to emphasize is that Persephone is unwilling, non-consenting and distressed.
3. ↑ Not quite; both the Hymn and Hesiod’s *Theogony* use similar wording for this event ("ἣν Ἀιδωνεὺς ἥρπαξεν" for both texts), and both first inform us that Hades took her, and *then* that it was Zeus’ idea. The phrase "Hades snatched" is actually repeated many times.
4. ↑ Their names have been found as (𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊), *si-to-po-ti-ni-ja* (“mistress of grain”) and (𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊𐄀𐀂𐀤𐀊), *po-ti-ni-ja, i-qe-ja* (“mistress of horses”) for Demeter, and (𐀟𐀩𐁚), *pe-re-swa* for Persephone. Collectively, they are (𐀷𐀙𐀰𐀂), *wa-na-so-i* (“the queens”).
5. ↑ However all these are guesses and hypotheses; only names of gods have so far been discovered in Linear B, but their roles and domains remain unclear.
6. ↑ It is actually presented as a violent kidnapping; the ancient texts repeat many times words such as *ἥρπαξεν/ἁρπάξας* (“snatched”) or *ἀεκαζόμενη/ἀέκουσα* (“unwilling”) and noting the girl’s crying.
7. ↑ Hades however cheated on Persephone with Minthe, and Persephone cheated on Hades with Adonis.
8. ↑ Ancient Greek art with screaming, distraught Persephone exists as well, however.