Study of the myth on Persephone
The main and fundamental myth where it appears is the myth of Persephone’s abduction, which is the protagonist along with Hades. Before the event, Persephone lived happy with her mother, away from Olympus and the Olympic gods. Although she was away from these gods, she did not miss suitors, such as Ares, Apollo, Hephaest or Hermes. However, her Demeter’s mother refused to have relations with them. All these data are contributed for the first time Homero in his anthem to Demeter.
The God who showed the most interest towards Persephone was Hades, the god of the underworld, probably the one who could wait for Demeter and to whom she would never accept. The fact that Hades felt attraction to the deity of spring could have been due to one of Eros’s arrows towards him at Aphrodite orders, although he doubts about it. The fact is that, as Hades knew perfectly that Demeter would never allow him to marry his daughter, he decided to talk to his brother Zeus. After several disputes, Zeus accepted or simply wandered her brother to her brother, which served Hades to have her right to kidnap her (not to unleash Demeter’s anger). The moment of rapture occurred in Enna, located on the island of Sicily.
Persephone collected flowers in a meadow along with nymphs and in the company of Athena and Artemis when, suddenly, a great crack emerged from the earth from which Hades appeared. Then, she rapt her beloved and took her with hell with a black horses -thrown car. When both disappeared, the only thing left of Persephone was a narcissus that she had previously collected, and several violets and margaritas wilting. The abduction is the most represented scene in which Persephone appears. From this moment on, history is divided into two parts:
The first is the tireless search for Persephone by her Demeter’s mother. After learning about the vile event, Demeter asked the Nymphs and the goddesses who at that time accompanied their daughter, but the only thing they heard were the desperate shouts of Persephone, who disappeared in the blink of an eye. After this news, Demeter decided to disguise himself as an old woman and look for his daughter throughout Greece.
After several days without eating or drinking, she was in Eleusis where her kings welcomed her with love and where she was in charge of taking care of the children. It was there that Prince Triptolomeo, knowing the true identity of the goddess, revealed that his brother Eubeo saw his daughter for the last time near that place. Eubeo was a livestock and had a pig piara. He observed that a funeral car quickly advanced near him and that he suddenly got into the earth, falling all his pigs through the immense crack. Who was driving this car had an armor and a blackish face and was accompanied by a beautiful young woman. Thanks to these testimonies, Demeter knew that who had taken his daughter was the God of hell, Hades. Together with Hécate, the Goddess Sorcerera and Witch. Although he did not answer first, thanks to the threat of Hécate to eclipse the noon he decided to help them and effectively revealed that he was the architect of his disappearance.
After knowing the truth and thinking that everything that had happened had been devised by his brother Zeus, he decided to take revenge. He prevented his trees from being bound and that the fields and pastures grew. This decision would cause not too late the death of cattle and therefore the death of men. Given this, Zeus took action on the matter and ordered Iris to transmit a message through the rainbow. Demeter ignored his brother’s message that he realized the catastrophes that his decision could cause. Nor did he accept the gifts of her brothers, since the only thing the goddess asked was to have her daughter back with her. Finally, Zeus sent Hermes to hell to talk to Hades. The messenger of the gods told him to release Persephone due to the serious problems that were being caused by the disappearance of the young goddess.
The second part is Persephone’s life as soon as he gets to hell. Although the most normal thing is that it is thought that Persephone was kidnapped, there are hypotheses that argue that the goddess could access Hades for really loving him, but this is less credible. Once descended to the hell, Persephone became. The first days that happened in hell were not pleasant for her, since she was kidnapped against her will, so she decided not to eat anything and preferred to starve before living there with Hades.
The moment in which both stories come together is with the arrival of Hermes under Zeus orders. Hades decided to obey what his brother had imposed him and left Persephone free only with one condition: that she did not eat any type of food from hell. However, Persephone could not stand there anymore and due to her famine she decided to assign her tooth to a few grenade seeds that were in one of the orchards of hell. Although she expected not to be discovered, she was ascapal. With all this, he made Persephone return to Eleusis where her mother was, but warned that her daughter had consumed food from the underworld, specifically six seeds from Granada, so she had to go down to hell six months.
In this way, Persephone was condemned to live half of the year with Hades and the other half in the earthly world along with Demeter. And that’s how the Greeks gave explanation to a phenomenon that they did not know how it worked, as were the four stations. The months spent with Hades represents autumn and winter, which was when Demeter left the fields and prevented pasts and trees from growing due to not having her daughter with her. On the other hand, the months that both passed together represented spring and summer, which was when the vegetation grew and everything flourished.
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