Persephone Research Paper

419 Words2 Pages
Persephone is known her central myth, that from the Homeric Hymns, describing the creations of the seasons. The legend told within the Homeric hymns goes as follows: Young Persephone is picking flowers, with the daughter of the ocean, in the valley of Nysa. The flowers types vary with different looks and scents but one in particular catches her eye, a Narcissus flower. In this account, Hades had made a deal with Zeus, that he would take Persephone to be his Queen. Therefore Hades had decided to plant the flower there, knowing it would attract the attention of young Persephone. When she uprooted it from the soil the ground split open, and out of it, rode Hades in his golden chariot. Hades snatched Persephone and carried her with him, down to the Underworld. Though she screams, her cries fall on deaf ears. Demeter does find out her daughter is gone and searches for nine long days, receiving no information “-not even a bird came to her as the massager of truth.” (Homeric Hymns Verse 39). Finally Hecate comes forth claiming to have heard the shrill screams, but seeing no…show more content…
When she reached the town or Eleusis, she ordered a temple built in her honor, there she refused to sow, or allow food to sprout from the land, until her grief was reconciled. The land, going into famine, gave Zeus no option but to order Persephone returned to her mother. Hermes is then summoned and sent down into the underworld to retrieve the daughter of Demeter. However Hades, with a different scheme in mind, gives her some pomegranate seeds, the “fruit of the Underworld” (Leeming 73). Now bound to the Hades by eating the fruit, she has to return for one third of every year, and just like when she was taken the first time, Demeter sends the land into famine, wherein the crops wither and die. This is the story of the birth of the seasons (Morford, Lenardon and Sham quoting the Homeric Hymns,
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