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Persephone ("she who destroys the light") is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. In other dialects she was known under various other names: Persephassa, Persephatta, or simply Kore. The Romans first heard of her from the Aeolian and Dorian cities of Magna Graecia, who used the dialectal variant Proserpina.

Hence, in Roman mythology she was called Proserpina, and as a revived Roman Proserpina she became an emblematic figure of the Renaissance.

1 Overview

The figure of Persephone is a well-known one today. Her story has great emotional power: an innocent maiden; a mother's grief at the abduction and return of her daughter. It is also cited frequently as a paradigm of myths that explain natural processes, with the descent and return of the goddess bringing about the change of seasons.

But the Greeks knew another face of Persephone as well. She was also the terrible Queen of the dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud. Her central myth, for all of its emotional familiarity, was also the back-story of the strange and secret rites at Eleusis, which promised immortality to their awe-struck participants - an immortality in her world beneath the soil, feasting with the heroes beneath her dread gaze.

2 The Abduction Myth

In the Olympian pantheon, Persephone is given a father, and made the daughter of ZeusZeus Kronios (descendant of Cronus), or simply Zeus or Zdeus ( Greek ) or Dias (Greek ) ("divine king") is the leader of the gods and god of the sky and thunder in Greek mythology. Etymology Zeus is the continuation of Dyeus, the supreme god in Indo-Europ and Demeter. Unlike every other offspring of an Olympian pairing, however, Persephone has no stable position at Olympus.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and its many reworks, Persephone became the goddessA goddess a female deity, contrasts with male deities, known as " gods". A great many cultures have their own goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger pantheon that includes both of the conventional genders and in some cases even her of the underworld when HadesHades ( Greek: ‘ Haides or ‘δης Hades ("unseen") means both the ancient Greek abode of the dead and the god of that Underworld. Haidou was the genitive form of the word, meaning "the house of Hades"; its nominative form, Haides was origin abducted her and brought her into the underworld. She was innocently picking flowers with some nymphNymphs : For the use of the term "nymph" in biology, see nymph (biology . For the use of the term "nymph" in terms of fishing, see nymph (fishing . Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large classs (or LeucippeIn Greek mythology, Leucippe was the name of several individuals: Leucippe was one of the Minyades who were driven by Dionysus to kill Hippasus. Leucippe was a nymph who was with Persephone when she was kidnapped by Hades. Leucippe was the daughter of Meg, or Oceanids) in a field in EnnaEnna, the ancient Henna, is located in the center of Sicily, towering above the surrounding countryside. It has earned a few knicknames, such as "belvedere" (panoramic viewpoint) or the "ombelico" (navel) of Sicily. The colony of Henna was founded on this when he came, bursting up through a cleft in the earth; the nymphs were changed by Demeter into the SirensIn Greek mythology, the Sirens or Seirenes ( Greek ) were sea nymphs who lived on an island called Sirenum Scopuli which was surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Approaching sailors were drawn to them by their enchanting singing, causing them to sail on the cl for not having interfered. Life came to a standstill as the depressed Demeter (goddess of the Earth) searched for her lost daughter; Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told her what had happened.

Finally, Zeus could not put up with the dying earth and forced Hades to return Persephone. But before she was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, which forced her to return six months out of each year. In some versions, Ascalaphus informed the other gods that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds. When Demeter and her daughter were together, the Earth flourished with vegetation, but for six months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. In alternate version, Hecate rescued Persephone.

This myth can also be interpreted as an allegory for ancient Greek marriage rituals. The Greeks felt that marriage was a sort of abduction of the bride by the groom from the bride's family, and this myth may have explained the origins of the marriage ritual. The more popular etiological explanation of the seasons may have been a later interpretation.

Persephone, as Queen of Hades, only showed mercy once, because the music of Orpheus was so hauntingly sad. She allowed Orpheus to bring his wife Eurydice back to the land of the living as long as she walked behind him and he never tried to look at her face until they reached the surface. Orpheus agreed but failed, looking back at the very end to make sure his wife was following, and lost Eurydice forever.

Persephone also figures in the story of Adonis, the Syrian consort of Aphrodite. When Adonis was born, Aphrodite took him under her wing, seducing him with the help of Helene, her friend, and was entranced by his unearthly beauty. She gave him to Persephone to watch over, but Persephone was also amazed at his beauty and refused to give him back. The argument between the two goddesses was settled either by Zeus or Calliope, with Adonis spending four months with Aphrodite, four months with Persephone and four months of the years with whomever he chose. He always chose Aphrodite because Persephone was the cold, unfeeling goddess of the underworld.

When Hades pursued a nymph named Mintho, Persephone turned her into a mint plant.

Persephone was the object of Pirithous' affections. Pirithous and Theseus, his friend, pledged to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen and together they kidnapped her and decided to hold onto her until she was old enough to marry. Pirithous chose Persephone. They left Helen with Theseus' mother, Aethra, and travelled to the underworld, domain of Persephone and her husband, Hades. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast; as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there.

Persephone and her mother Demeter were often referred to as aspects of the same goddess, and were called "the Demeters" or simply "the goddesses." The story of Persephone's abduction was part of the initiation rites in the Eleusinian Mysteries.