Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone (in ancient Greek, Περσεφόνη Persephónē) is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. The young maiden, also known by the name of Kore and in Roman mythology as Proserpina, marries Hades and in addition to being a goddess, she becomes the queen of the Underworld. The Roman form of the name Proserpina comes from the dialectal form of the name in the Aeolian and Doric cities of Magna Graecia.
Etymology
The goddess is known by two different etymologically unrelated names: Persephone and Core (Ancient Greek Κόρη). The Core form is simply the common name κόρη for a maiden or young woman, evidently related to the meaning of her mother's name Demeter hers.
In epic literature, the first name has, in Ionic dialect, the forms Persephonē (in ancient Greek Περσεφόνη) and (especially in Homer) Persephoneia (Περσεφονεία, Persephoneia). In other dialects, the name has different forms that are not simply dialectal variants: Persephassa (Περσεφάσσα), Persephatta (Περσεφάττα), as well as Periphona (Πηριφόνα) and Phersephassa (Φερσέφασσα). All this variety of forms suggests that the Greeks themselves had difficulty pronouncing its name, and therefore it would have a pre-Greek origin. In the Cratylus, Plato calls it Ferepapha (Pherepapha, Φερέπαφα), and explains it with an ad hoc etymology "because she is wise and touches what moves".
Persephatta (Περσεφάττα) is interpreted as "the one that winnows the grain", relating it to the Sanskrit parsa, "bundle of grain" and a second element that would have in Indo-European form *-gʷʰn-t-ih} of the stem *gʷʰen "to strike".
Another etymology proposes to explain it as 'φέρειν φόνον', pherein phonon, "(she who) brings death".
Overview
The myth of the abduction of Persephone has great emotional power that has given it great popularity: an innocent maiden, a mother's grief over the abduction and the return of her daughter. It is also frequently cited as a paradigm for myths explaining natural processes, with the descent and return of the goddess causing the change of seasons. Currently, the fact that Hades and Persephone constituted one of the most stable and happy marriages within the Greek Pantheon, with relatively few infidelities on the part of both (Mind and Leuce on the part of Hades and Adonis on the part of Persephone), and the fact that Persephone ruled the underworld on an equal footing with Hades, as opposed to the role of consorts that Hera and Amphitrite had as wives to Zeus and Poseidon
But the Greeks also knew another facet of Persephone. She was also the terrible Queen of the underworld, whose name was not safe to pronounce aloud and who was referred to as "The Maiden." In Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus travels to the underworld, he refers to her as the "Iron Queen". Its central myth, for all its emotional familiarity, was also the unspoken context for the strange secret initiation rites of regeneration of the Eleusinian mysteries, which promised immortality to awed participants: an immortality in Persephone's underworld, at a banquet with the heroes under his terrifying gaze.
Myths
Birth
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And he [Zeus] went to the bed of the abundant Deméter, who conceived Persephone, the one with white arms, stolen by Hades from his mother's side.Hesiod, Theogony, 912
Most classical sources consider Persephone to be the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, however, the Mythological Library of Apollodorus contains an alternative version indicating that she was the daughter of Zeus and Styx.
The Kidnapping
Persephone was picking flowers with some nymphs, as well as the goddesses Athena and Artemis, in a field at Enna or on the plain of Nyssa when Hades appeared, emerging from a crack in the ground and kidnapped her, carrying her away in his chariot drawn by immortal mares to his subterranean kingdom in the Nebrodi Mountains. Demeter searched everywhere for his lost daughter. Hecate, who had heard the screams of Persephone or the Big Dipper, suggested to Demeter to speak with Helios, the sun, who sees everything, so that he could tell her what had happened and he informed Demeter that Hades had been the one who had fallen. he had taken her, with the consent of Zeus. In other versions, it is the nymph Cyane or the inhabitants of Hermione who reveals to Demeter what has happened.
Demeter, devastated and filled with anger, caused the fields to become barren until finally, Zeus forced Hades to return Persephone, sending Hermes to rescue her. However, she ate several pomegranate seeds, forcing her to return to the Underworld and stay there for a third or half of each year. In one tradition Persephone would have voluntarily eaten the seeds after Hades convinced her that he would be a great husband and that she would be the queen and ruler of the underworld, but according to another version, she would have eaten the seeds without knowing what would happen next. When Persephone returned to her mother, she again allowed the fruits and flowers to grow in the fields. On the other hand, the nymphs that accompanied Persephone were punished by being transformed into Sirens for not having intervened.
It was after Persephone's rescue from the underworld that Demeter revealed the Eleusinian mysteries. Persephone was often referred to as "Core", meaning "the girl", or to her and her mother Demeter as "the Demeters" or " the two goddesses". The story of the abduction of Persephone was part of the initiation rites into the Eleusinian mysteries. In an alternate version, Hecate rescued Persephone.
Persephone as Queen of the Underworld
It should be noted that in the Homeric poems Persephone's mother-daughter relationship with Demeter does not expressly appear, but Persephone is already mentioned as queen of the Underworld. According to Diodorus Siculus, during the wedding that took place between Hades and Persephone, the island of Sicily was given to the bride by Zeus as a gift.
Persephone, as the wife of Hades, only showed mercy once. Because Orpheus's music was so hauntingly sad, he allowed Orpheus to take his wife, Eurydice, back to the world of the living on the condition that she would walk behind him and he would never attempt to meet her face until they were together. on the surface. Orpheus agreed but failed, looking back, almost at the end of the tour, to make sure that his wife was following him, he lost Eurydice forever.
She also chatted with Psyche when she went down to the underworld on behalf of Aphrodite in search of a chest that she had been sent to look for.
Similarly found in the myth of Minte. This nymph became the concubine of Hades, who, according to myth, was trampled by Kore (Core), and transformed into a mint plant, which is also known as "Hedyosmos". version the words of the nymph comparing herself to the goddess of the underworld reach the ears of Demeter and in another it is Persephone herself who confronts her but in both versions the result is the same for Minte.
Hades once fell in love with and kidnapped a nymph named Leuce and took her to the underworld. Angered by this, Persephone transformed her into a white poplar. Another version of the myth also tells that the one who transformed her could have been Hades to immortalize her at the time of her natural death.
Persephone was the object of Pirithous' affection. His friend Theseus and he promised to marry each other's daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen, kidnapped her with the help of Pirithous, and decided to keep her until she was of marriageable age. They left Helen with Theseus's mother, Aetra, and traveled to the underworld, the realm of Pirithous's chosen one, Persephone, and her husband, Hades, who pretended to offer them hospitality and prepared a banquet. As soon as the couple sat down, the snakes coiled around their feet, trapping them. Theseus was eventually rescued by Heracles.
Other myths about Persephone
Persephone also figures in the story of Adonis, the Syrian consort of Aphrodite. When Adonis was born, Aphrodite took him under her wing and was bewitched by her unearthly beauty. Aphrodite gave it to Persephone to take care of for her, but she too was amazed by its beauty and she refused to give it back. The discussion between the two goddesses was resolved by Zeus or Calliope, who decided that Adonis would spend several months —four or six, according to different versions— with each one, in a kind of polygyny.
Offspring
According to the most common tradition, the marriage formed by Persephone and Hades was sterile. Instead, in the Orphic version, Persephone was seduced by her own father in the form of a serpent and had a son: Zagreo, who was killed by the Titans at the behest of Hera. However, in a fragment of Aeschylus it is said that Zagreus was sometimes considered the son of Hades. On the other hand, an Orphic hymn makes Persephone the mother of Melinoe, after having slept with Zeus, while he was disguised as Hades to deceive and seduce her daughter again, even so, the paternity of Melinoe is also given to Hades in some versions and the Suda indicates that Macaria was the daughter of Hades, although without mentioning who her mother was (although it is usually assumed that it is Persephone). Finally, in the Orphic tradition it is indicated that the Eumenides were daughters of Hades and Persephone as they were deities of the underworld.
Persephone in worship
A pre-Greek divinity?
Many modern scholars have tried to argue that the cult of Persephone was a continuation of the worship that was already professed in the Neolithic or Minoan civilization. Among the classicists, this thesis has been defended by Günter Zuntz and cautiously included by Walter Burkert in his definitive book Greek Religion.
Mythologist Károly Kerényi has linked Persephone to Ariadne, suggesting her identification with the anonymous "lady of the labyrinth" of Knossos.
On a Linear B Mycenaean Greek tablet from Pylos, dated between 1400 and 1200 B.C. C. (PY Tn 316), John Chadwick finds the name (as pe-re-*82 or pe-re-swa) of a goddess *Prey that could be identified with the Oceanid Perseis, daughter of Oceanus, and suggests a possible connection with the first element of the name "Persephone".
Cult of Persephone in Ancient Greece and its colonies
Inspired by James Frazer, Jane Ellen Harrison, and modern mythologists, some researchers have labeled Persephone a life, death, and resurrection deity.
In any case, two different facets of the cult of Persephone in Ancient Greece can be distinguished. One of them, within the cult of "the two goddesses" shared with her mother, Demeter, particularly prominent in the Eleusinian mysteries celebrated in the Attica region. The rites that were celebrated in this place were, in part, secret. There are testimonies that sacred acts were celebrated among them in memory of the myth of the kidnapping of Persephone, her search and her reunion with her mother. In many other cities of Ancient Greece —and also in the Greek colonies that existed throughout the Mediterranean Sea—there were sanctuaries where Demeter and Persephone were worshiped together (usually under the alternative name of Core), although there were also some temples dedicated specifically to Persephone. The festivals of the Thesmophoria were jointly dedicated to the two goddesses. On the other hand, in the sanctuary of Demeter and Core of the Acrocorinth, specifically, a large number of ex-votos were found that indicate a cult of an agricultural nature in which women and peasants played an important role, and not only to request help from the goddesses in daily tasks but also expressed their personal desires through the so-called curse tablets.
Especially important was his worship in different places on the island of Sicily. In honor of her, the festival of Antesphorias was celebrated. Tradition said that on this island both goddesses were born, the kidnapping of Persephone had taken place, and that cereals had been obtained there for the first time.
The other facet of her cult is as a divinity of the Underworld or Queen of the dead. In this sense, especially from the IV century B.C. C. is when Persephone is often evoked in epigrams that appear in epigraphic inscriptions and funerary gold foil.
Among the sanctuaries dedicated to Persephone, one of the most prominent was that of Locros Epicefirios, in southern Italy. The iconographic representations in pinakes found in this area show that in this sanctuary this divinity was granted a protective function of women, children and marriage.
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