Phersipnei

In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone ( ; gr, Περσεφόνη, Persephónē), also called Kore or Cora ( ; gr, Κόρη, Kórē, the maiden), is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld after her abduction by and marriage to her uncle Hades, the king of the underworld.Martin Nilsson (1967). ''Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion'' Vol I pp 462–463, 479–480

The myth of her abduction, her sojourn in the underworld, and her temporary return to the surface represents her functions as the embodiment of spring and the personification of vegetation, especially grain crops, which disappear into the earth when sown, sprout from the earth in spring, and are harvested when fully grown. In Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a sheaf of grain. She may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades.

Persephone as a vegetation goddess and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a happy afterlife. The origins of her cult are uncertain, but it was based on ancient agrarian cults of agricultural communities. In Athens, the mysteries celebrated in the month of Anthesterion were dedicated to her. The city of Epizephyrian Locris, in modern Calabria (southern Italy), was famous for its cult of Persephone, where she is a goddess of marriage and childbirth in this region.

Her name has numerous historical variants. These include Persephassa () and Persephatta (). In Latin, her name is rendered Proserpina. She was identified by the Romans as the Italic goddess Libera, who was conflated with Proserpina. Myths similar to Persephone's descent and return to earth also appear in the cults of male gods including Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, and in Minoan Crete.

Name

In a Linear B Mycenaean Greek inscription on a tablet found at Pylos dated 1400–1200 BC, John Chadwick reconstructed the name of a goddess, ''*Preswa'' who could be identified with Perse, daughter of Oceanus and found speculative the further identification with the first element of Persephone. ''Persephonē'' (Greek: ) is her name in the Ionic Greek of epic literature. The Homeric form of her name is ''Persephoneia'' (Περσεφονεία, ''Persephoneia''). In other dialects, she was known under variant names: ''Persephassa'' (), ''Persephatta'' (), or simply ''Korē'' (, "girl, maiden"). On 5th century Attic vases one often encounters the form () Plato calls her ''Pherepapha'' () in his ''Cratylus'', "because she is wise and touches that which is in motion". There are also the forms ''Periphona'' (Πηριφόνα) and ''Phersephassa'' (). The existence of so many different forms shows how difficult it was for the Greeks to pronounce the word in their own language and suggests that the name may have a Pre-Greek origin.

The etymology of the word 'Persephone' is obscure. According to a recent hypothesis advanced by Rudolf Wachter, the first element in the name (''Perso''- (Περσο-) may well reflect a very rare term, attested in the Rig Veda (Sanskrit ''parṣa-''), and the Avesta, meaning 'sheaf of corn'/'ear (of grain)'. The second constituent, ''phatta'', preserved in the form ''Persephatta'' (), would in this view reflect Proto-Indo European ', from the root ' "to strike/beat/kill". The combined sense would therefore be "she who beats the ears of corn", i.e., a "thresher of grain".

A popular folk etymology is from , ''pherein phonon'', "to bring (or cause) death".Smith
"Perse'phone"
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Titles and functions

The epithets of Persephone reveal her double function as chthonic and vegetation goddess. The surnames given to her by the poets refer to her role as queen of the lower world and the dead and to the power that shoots forth and withdraws into the earth. Her common name as a vegetation goddess is Kore, and in Arcadia she was worshipped under the title Despoina, "the mistress", a very old chthonic divinity. Günther Zuntz considers "Persephone" and "Kore" as distinct deities and writes that "no farmer prayed for corn to Persephone; no mourner thought of the dead as being with Kore." Ancient Greek writers were however not as consistent as Zuntz claims.

Goddess of spring and nature

Plutarch writes that Persephone was identified with the spring season, and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, her return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of immortality, and she was frequently represented on sarcophagi.

In the religions of the Orphics and the Platonists, Kore is described as the all-pervading goddess of nature who both produces and destroys everything, and she is therefore mentioned along with or identified as other such divinities including Isis, Rhea, Ge, Hestia, Pandora, Artemis, and Hecate. In Orphic tradition, Persephone is said to be the daughter of Zeus and his mother Rhea, rather than of Demeter. The Orphic Persephone is said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus, Iacchus, Zagreus, and the little-attested Melinoë.

Queen of the underworld

In mythology and literature she is often called dread(ed) Persephone, and queen of the underworld, within which tradition it was forbidden to speak her name. This tradition comes from her conflation with the very old chthonic divinity Despoina (" hemistress"), whose real name could not be revealed to anyone except those initiated into her mysteries. As goddess of death, she was also called a daughter of Zeus and Styx, the river that formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld. In Homer's epics, she appears always together with Hades and the underworld, apparently sharing with Hades control over the dead. In Homer's ''Odyssey'', Odysseus encounters the "dread Persephone" in Tartarus when he visits his dead mother. Odysseus sacrifices a ram to the chthonic goddess Persephone and the ghosts of the dead who drink the blood of the sacrificed animal. In the reformulation of Greek mythology expressed in the ''Orphic Hymns'', Dionysus and Melinoë are separately called children of Zeus and Persephone. Groves sacred to her stood at the western extremity of the earth on the frontiers of the lower world, which itself was called "house of Persephone".

Her central myth served as the context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis, which promised immortality to initiates.

Nestis

In a Classical period text ascribed to Empedocles, describing a correspondence among four deities and the classical elements, the name ''Nestis'' for water apparently refers to Persephone:
: "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: Enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus, and Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears."

Of the four deities of Empedocles' elements, it is the name of Persephone alone that is taboo – ''Nestis'' is a euphemistic cult title – for she was also the terrible Queen of the Dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was euphemistically named simply as ''Kore'' or "the Maiden", a vestige of her archaic role as the deity ruling the underworld. ''Nestis'' means "the Fasting One" in ancient Greek.

Epithets

As a goddess of the underworld, Persephone was given euphemistically friendly names.Rhode (1961), ''Psyche'' I, pp. 206–210 However, it is possible that some of them were the names of original goddesses:
* Despoina (''dems-potnia'') "the mistress" (literally "the mistress of the house") in Arcadia.
* Hagne, "pure", originally a goddess of the springs in Messenia.Nilsson (1967) Vol I, pp. 478–480
* Melindia or Melinoia (meli, "honey"), as the consort of Hades, in Hermione. (Compare Hecate, Melinoë)
* Malivina
* Melitodes
* Aristi cthonia, "the best chthonic".
* Praxidike, the Orphic Hymn to Persephone identifies Praxidike as an epithet of Persephone: "Praxidike, subterranean queen. The Eumenides' source other fair-haired, whose frame proceeds from Zeus' ineffable and secret seeds."

As a vegetation goddess, she was called:Nilsson (1967) Vol I, pp. 463–466
* Kore, "the maiden".
* Kore Soteira, "the savior maiden", in Megalopolis.
* Neotera, "the younger", in Eleusis.
* Kore of Demeter Hagne in the Homeric hymn.
* Kore memagmeni, "the mixed daughter" (bread).

Demeter and her daughter Persephone were usually called:
* The goddesses, often distinguished as "the older" and "the younger" in Eleusis.
* Demeters, in Rhodes and Sparta
* The thesmophoroi, "the legislators" in the Thesmophoria.
* The Great Goddesses, in Arcadia.
* The mistresses in Arcadia. Pausanias.''Description of Greece'' 5.15.4, 5, 6
* Karpophoroi, "the bringers of fruit", in Tegea of Arcadia.

Mythology

Abduction myth

Persephone's abduction by Hades is mentioned briefly in Hesiod's ''Theogony'',Hesiod, ''Theogony'
914
and is told in considerable detail in the ''Homeric Hymn to Demeter''. Zeus, it is said, permitted Hades, who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to abduct her as her mother Demeter was not likely to allow her daughter to go down to Hades. Persephone was gathering flowers with the Oceanids along with Artemis and Pallas, daughter of Triton, as the ''Homeric Hymn'' says, in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Demeter, when she found her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth with Hecate's torches. In most versions, she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and, in the depth of her despair, she causes nothing to grow. Helios, the Sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered where her daughter had been taken. Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone.

Hades complies with the request, but first he tricks Persephone, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Hermes is sent to retrieve her but, because she had tasted the food of the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year (the winter months) there, and the remaining part of the year with the gods above. With the later writers Ovid and Hyginus, Persephone's time in the underworld becomes half the year. It was explained to Demeter, her mother, that she would be released, so long as she did not taste the food of the underworld, as that was an Ancient Greek example of a taboo.

Various local traditions place Persephone's abduction in different locations. The Sicilians, among whom her worship was probably introduced by the Corinthian and Megarian colonists, believed that Hades found her in the meadows near Enna, and that a well arose on the spot where he descended with her into the lower world. The Cretans thought that their own island had been the scene of the abduction, and the Eleusinians mentioned the Nysian plain in Boeotia, and said that Persephone had descended with Hades into the lower world at the entrance of the western Oceanus. Later accounts place the abduction in Attica, near Athens, or near Eleusis. The Homeric hymn mentions the ''Nysion'' (or Mysion) which was probably a mythical place. The location of this mythical place may simply be a convention to show that a magically distant chthonic land of myth was intended in the remote past.

Before Persephone was abducted by Hades, the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd Eubuleus saw a girl in a black chariot driven by an invisible driver being carried off into the earth which had violently opened up. Eubuleus was feeding his pigs at the opening to the underworld, and his swine were swallowed by the earth along with her. This aspect of the myth is an etiology for the relation of pigs with the ancient rites in Thesmophoria,Reference to the Thesmophoria in Lucian's ''Dialogues of the Courtesans'' 2.1. and in Eleusis.

In the hymn, Persephone eventually returns from the underworld and is reunited with her mother near Eleusis. The Eleusinians built a temple near the spring of Callichorus, and Demeter establishes her mysteries there.

In some versions, Ascalaphus informed the other deities that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds. As punishment for informing Hades, he was pinned under a heavy rock in the underworld by either Persephone or Demeter. When Demeter and her daughter were reunited, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for some months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once again became a barren realm. This is an origin story to explain the seasons.

In an earlier version, Hecate rescued Persephone. On an Attic red-figured bell krater of in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Persephone is rising as if up stairs from a cleft in the earth, while Hermes stands aside; Hecate, holding two torches, looks back as she leads her to the enthroned Demeter.

The 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia ''Suda'' introduces a goddess of a blessed afterlife assured to Orphic mystery initiates. This Macaria is asserted to be the daughter of Hades, but no mother is mentioned.

Interpretation of the myth

The abduction of Persephone is an etiological myth providing an explanation for the changing of the seasons. Since Persephone had consumed pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she was forced to spend four months, or in other versions six months for six seeds, with Hades. When Persephone would return to the underworld, Demeter's despair at losing her daughter would cause the vegetation and flora of the world to wither, signifying the Autumn and Winter seasons. When Persephone's time is over and she would be reunited with her mother, Demeter's joyousness would cause the vegetation of the earth to bloom and blossom which signifies the Spring and Summer seasons. This also explains why Persephone is associated with Spring: her re-emergence from the underworld signifies the onset of Spring. Therefore, not only does Persephone and Demeter's annual reunion symbolize the changing seasons and the beginning of a new cycle of growth for the crops, it also symbolizes death and the regeneration of life.Martin Nilsson (1967) Vol I, pp. 473–474.

In another interpretation of the myth, the abduction of Persephone by Hades, in the form of Ploutus (, wealth), represents the wealth of the grain contained and stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (''pithoi'') during the Summer seasons (as that was drought season in Greece). In this telling, Persephone as grain-maiden symbolizes the grain within the ''pithoi'' that is trapped underground within the realm of Hades. In the beginning of the autumn, when the grain of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter. This interpretation of Persephone's abduction myth symbolizes the cycle of life and death as Persephone both dies as she (the grain) is buried in the ''pithoi'' (as similar ''pithoi'' were used in ancient times for funerary practices) and is reborn with the exhumation and spreading of the grain.

Lincoln argues that the myth is a description of the loss of Persephone's virginity, where her epithet ''koure'' signifies "a girl of initiatory age", and where Hades is the male oppressor forcing himself onto a young girl for the first time.

Other accounts

According to the Greek tradition a hunt-goddess preceded the harvest goddess. In Arcadia, Demeter and Persephone were often called ''Despoinai'' (Δέσποιναι, "the mistresses"). They are the two Great Goddesses of the Arcadian cults, and evidently they come from a more primitive religion. The Greek god Poseidon probably substituted for the companion (''Paredros'', Πάρεδρος) of the Minoan Great goddess
in the Arcadian mysteries. In the Arcadian mythos, while Demeter was looking for the kidnapped Persephone, she caught the eye of her younger brother Poseidon. Demeter turned into a mare to escape him, but then Poseidon turned into a stallion to pursue her. He caught her and raped her. Afterwards, Demeter gave birth to the talking horse Arion and the goddess Despoina ("the mistress"), a goddess of the Arcadian mysteries.

After a plague hit Aonia, its people asked the Oracle of Delphi, and they were told they needed to appease the anger of the king and queen of the underworld by means of sacrifice. Two maidens, Menippe and Metioche (who were the daughters of Orion), were chosen and they agreed to be offered to the two gods in order to save their country. As the two of them were led to the altar to be sacrificed, Persephone and Hades took pity on them and turned them into comets instead.

Adonis was an exceedingly beautiful mortal man with whom Persephone fell in love. After he was born, Aphrodite entrusted him to Persephone to raise. But when Persephone got a glimpse of the beautiful Adonis—finding him as attractive as Aphrodite did—she refused to give him back to her. The matter was brought before Zeus, and he decreed that Adonis would spend one third of the year with each goddess, and have the last third for himself. Adonis chose to spend his own portion of the year with Aphrodite. Alternatively Adonis had to spend one half of the year with each goddess, at the suggestion of the Muse Calliope. Of them Aelian wrote that Adonis' life was divided between two goddesses, one who loved him beneath the earth, and one above, while the satirical author Lucian of Samosata

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