But a gardener of Hades had seen her and ratted her out to Hades. To fight off her terrible hunger, she secretly ate seven pomegranate seeds. In another version of this story, Persephone innocently plucked some fruit from the trees in the gardens of Hades herself. Sadly, this apparent act of kindness was a trick: Anyone who tastes the food of Hades must remain in the Underworld. But before she left, Hades urged Persephone to appease her terrible hunger by eating a single pomegranate seed. Persephone had not eaten a single thing-whether from sorrow, loss of appetite, or stubbornness-since her arrival in the Underworld. Hades shrugged compliantly and agreed to let her go. Hermes, summoned by Zeus, raced down to Hades to fetch Persephone. Zeus had no choice: He relented, promising to bring Persephone back to her mother. Zeus sent a parade of gods and goddesses to Demeter to beg her to come back to Olympus and to restore fertility to the earth.īut Demeter refused to budge until her daughter stood by her side.
#Hades greek full
Instead she roamed the earth in the guise of a mortal, forbidding the trees to bear fruit and the earth to nurture vegetables and herbs.Īfter a full year of famine had plagued the earth, Zeus realized that if he allowed Demeter to persist, all of humankind would starve-leaving no one to honor and make offerings to the gods. Enraged by the news of Persephone's abduction (and Zeus's possible complicity), she refused to return to Mount Olympus. Helius did tell her what had happened, but also tried to persuade Demeter that Hades-as Zeus's brother and ruler of one third of the universe-was not an unfit husband for Persephone.ĭemeter refused to accept Hades as a suitable mate for her precious daughter. The two goddesses went to Helius, the god of the sun, who saw everything that happened on Earth. Recognizing this universality gave rise to Jung's notion of “archetypes.”įinally, on the tenth day, the goddess Hecate told Demeter that Persephone had been carried away, but she did not know by whom. Carl Jung, the pioneering psychologist and scholar of mythology, saw in such tales the universal pain of this ordeal-for example, when a daughter marries. The painful separation of mother and daughter has been a common theme in mythology from Greece to Indonesia. She threatened to make the earth barren forever and thus destroy all of humankind if she did not find Persephone.
She destroyed lands, crops, and livestock as she bewailed the loss of her daughter. She traveled to the farthest corners of the earth, searching for nine full days and nights without ever stopping to eat, drink, bathe, or rest. Distraught and desperate, Demeter searched high and low for her daughter. The Long Winter of Her Discontentĭemeter soon came to collect her daughter, but could not find a trace of Persephone. As Hades and Persephone disappeared into the depths, the hole closed up behind them. The earth opened up before Hades' chariot and the god drove the jet-black horses down into the chasm. And though she called out to them-and plaintively called for her mother-no one heard her pleas. The appearance, abduction, and disappearance happened so swiftly that none of Persephone's companions witnessed the kidnapping. The god swooped down upon Persephone, scooped her up with one arm, and literally and figuratively deflowered her-leaving the plain scattered with blossoms of every color. Hades suddenly appeared, thundering across the plain in his four-horse chariot. Persephone was gathering flowers one day on a plain in Sicily. At Zeus's suggestion-or with his tacit understanding-Hades resolved to abduct the maiden. Yet he warned Hades that Demeter would never approve this coupling, for she would not want her daughter spirited off to a sunless world. His brother Zeus consented to the marriage-or at least refused to oppose it. Hades, god of the Underworld, fell in love with Persephone and wanted her as his bride. The only daughter of Zeus and Demeter (the goddess of grain, agriculture, and fertility), Persephone was an innocent maiden, a virgin who loved to play in the fields where eternal springtime reigned.īut Hades had other plans for Persephone: He would steal her innocence and virginity and turn her into the dreaded goddess of the Underworld. The first living visitor to the Underworld, though an unwilling one, was the goddess Persephone. What the Hell? Adventures in the Underworld.
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