Persephone/Kore/Proserpina- goddess of the Underworld, spring, growth and vegetation. She was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus, and with her mother was linked to the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult based around the afterlife. In one account Apollodorus called her a daughter of Zeus and Styx, but this is the only accound where she is not a child of Demeter and Zeus.
In her role as a vegetation goddess she was known as Kore, the maiden, it was after Hades abducted her that she seemed to become Persephone. In Arcadia she was called Despoina, the mistress. Originally Despoina/Despoena/Despoine was a seperate entity, a daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, a goddess of mysteries whose real name was known only to those intiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. She later became linked to Persephone.
Persephone was a beautiful young maiden and Hermes, Ares, Apollo and Hephaestus all offered her gifts in an attempt to woo her- Hermes a rod, Ares a spear and cuirass, Apollo a lyre and Hephaestus a necklace. Demeter rejected the gifts and kept her daughter from the suitors.
Persephone's most infamous story is her abduction by Hades. Hades fell in love with her and asked his brother Zeus for permission to have her as his bride. Without Demeter or Persephone's consent, Zeus agreed that Hades could take Persephone for wife. So when Persephone was playing in the fields, usually with Okeanids, nymphs and/or Athena and Artemis, gathering flowers, Hades came up from the ground in a black or gold chariot, either visible or invisible, and abducted Persephone. In one account the nymph or naiad Cyane/Kyane tried to stop Hades, she cited her consentual relationship with the river god Anapos/Anapis to persuade Hades to woo Persephone but he ignored her and either he turned her into a spring or she cried in grief and became one.
When Demeter realised her daughter was missing she wandered the daughter with torches trying to find her, taking resident with several mortals as she did. Some sources say that the goddess Hecate accompanied her. Eventually she was informed by Helios, in some sources because Hecate suggested seeking him out, that Hades had abducted her daughter.
It was only after the earth began to waste away as Demeter neglected her duties as a harvest goddess that Zeus was finally forced to demand the return of Persephone. Either Hecate or Hermes went to retrieve the goddess. Persephone had eaten of the Underworld, six or four pomegranate seeds, and it was a rule of the Moirae that whoever ate of the Underworld had to stay there. Hermes or Zeus made a deal with Hades and Demeter, Persephone would stay in the Underworld with Hades for a third of the year and would spend the other two thirds of the year with Demeter. The result was the four seasons- Spring and Summer were when Demeter rejoiced to be with her daughter, Autumn came as the harvest goddess grew sad over her daughter's looming departure and Winter was when Demeter was without Persephone. In some stories Persephone actually spent half the year with her mother and half with her husband.
One story mentions Ascalaphus/Askalaphos a son of the river of pain Acheron and the Underworld nymph Orphne/Styx/Gorgyra who was Hades' orchadist. He was the one who told the gods that Persephone had eaten in the Underworld and was punished by being turned into a screech owl. Hades then made the screech owl his bird.
With Hades she is usually said to have had no children as the god of the dead cannot have children. However, there are sources that give them children, or mention Persephone having children with Zeus Khthonios, thought to mean the Underworld Zeus and therefore Hades rather than his brother. Melinoe was a goddess of ghosts, she wandered the earth followed by ghosts and brought madness and nightmares to men. Described as being half dark and half light because she was a daughter of Zeus (light) and Persephone (dark) or Hades (dark) and Persephone (light). One hymn tells how Zeus came to Persephone in the form of Hades and seduced her, and for that Hades mangled her flesh in some fashion. She was described as a nymph and was linked to Hecate and the Erinyes.
Macaria/Makaria may have been another daughter, she was the goddess of blessed death, a merciful counterpart to Thanatos she was said to be a daughter of Hades but no mother is given.
The Erinyes are sometimes said to be daughters of Hades and Persephone, though their parents are also given to be Gaia by Ouranos' blood, Nyx, just Hades, or Poine/Poene the spirit of retribution and vengeance. Depicted as having bat or bird wings, blood dripping eyes, dog bodies or/and waists with serpents around them, three are named- Alecto, Megaera and Tisiphone. They punished people who broke oaths, killed their parents, murdered or harboured criminals, and also punished criminals in the Underworld. They were also known as the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, suggesting a gentler aspect.
With Zeus, Persephone had a son known as Zagreus. Zeus seduced Persephone in the form of a serpent, their son was killed by Titans instigated by a jealous Demeter. They distracted the child with toys and then ripped him to shreds, leaving only his heart. He turned into his several animal forms to escape them but died in the form of a bull. Zeus , Rhea, Athena, Persephone or Hermes recovered the heart and Zeus had Semele swallow the heart and within her the child was reformed as Dionysus. Nonnus mentions that Zeus seduced Persephone before she was wed and that the child played with Zeus' thunderbolts upon his throne and was intended to be his successor. In this story Zagreus is linked with Dionysus saying to be his first form but in other stories the two are two seperate Dionysus, the second being a child of Zeus and Semele and reborn from Zeus' thigh. Zagreus is also linked to Iacchus/Iacchos/Iakchos, a child originally born of Demeter and Poseidon said to carry torches, he was said to be like a star. He was linked to Dionysus and Zagreus, said to be born in the Underworld. Nonnus referred to him as the third Dionysus.
Adonis was another lover though no children came from this union. Adonis was a beautiful child born as the result of incest between Myrrha/Smyrna a princess of Crete and her father King Cinyras. She either simply loved her father or was driven to it by the Erinyes or Aphrodite, possibly because she failed to honour the goddess. After discovering what had happened, Cinyras tried to kill her but she fled and he possibly killed himself, alternatively Apollo killed him after beating him in a music contest Cinyras challenged him to. After wandering in grief the gods turned Myrrha into a myrrh tree. Aphrodite then found her baby, Adonis, in the tree. Aphrodite entrusted the baby to Persephone who then refused to give him back. Zeus or Calliope was forced to intervene and it was decided that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Persephone, one third with Aphrodite and the final third with whoever he chose, naturally he picked Aphrodite.
Adonis was killed by a boar, either sent by Apollo, Artemis or Ares, or Apollo or Ares in disguise, and returned to the Underworld.
Pseudo-Hyginus credited her with creating man from clay, a talent usually given to Prometheus, or in the case of Pandora, Hephaestus. In this obscure story Persephone (here she was called Cura/Koure) created man, Zeus gave man life and the pair disputed over a name for man. Gaia wanted it named for her since it had been made from her and the dispute was taken to Cronus who deemed that he be called homo since he was named from humus.
As Queen of the Underworld she showed kindness to several souls. When Sisyphus was dragged to the Underworld by Thanatos he persuaded either Persephone or Hades to allow him to return to the upper world because his wife had not buried him properly. The god or goddess complied and he ahd to be dragged back by Hermes.
When Orpheus came to the Underworld for his wife Eurydice/Eurydike, Persephone was moved by his music and granted him permission to take his wife back, or persuaded her husband to allow Eurydice to return. There was a clause though, Orpheus must not look back for his wife on their journey out but he did because she limped and he feared she was not there and she was forced to remain in the Underworld.
When the princess Alcestis offered her own life in exchange for her husband Admetus Persephone sent her back and had them both spared. Admetus was a king who had treated Apollo kindly when he had to serve him as a shepherd, his penance for killing the Cyclopes. Apollo got the Moirae drunk and arranged for them to agree that Admetus would be spared death if another volunteered in his place. It is suggested that he faced death for forgetting to sacrifice to Artemis. When not even his elderly parents would sacrifice themselves, his wife Alcestis agreed to. In other versions of the story it is Heracles who rescues Alcestis, either by wrestling Thanatos or Hades for her.
When Boeotia was struck by a plague and Erinyes and the oracle said two maidens must be sacrificed, the daughters of Orion- Menippe and Metioche, known as the Coronides/Koronides, volunteered themselves and killed themselves with their shuttles. Persephone and Hades, or just Persephone, took pity on them and turned them into comets. Ironically, it was Persephone and Hades who caused the pestilence.
She also permitted Heracles to take Cerebus away for his task and to free Theseus, and in some accounts Peirithoos as well, and compelled him to stop wrestling Menoites the keeper of Hades' cattle, who fought Heracles when he killed one. Alternatively, it was just Hades or Hades and Persephone who permitted the hero to take Cerberus.
She also helped Eros' lover Psyche when she came to the Underworld on a task for Aphrodite. Aphrodite sent her to fetch Persephone's box of beauty. Persephone received her hospitably and gave her the box. However, she did also offer her food, perhaps a trick, and in the box was sleep, as Psyche discovered when she opened it. Of course, it is thought that Persephone meant the sleep for Aphrodite rather than Psyche.
As well as kind Persephone could be wrathful. She is said to have turned her husband's lover, the naiad Minthe/Mintha into a mint plant when the nymph boasted of being more beautiful than the goddess. Alternatively, she crushed her with her foot then transformed her, or crushed her to dust and Hades transformed her, or it was Demeter who crushed her when she boasted that she was more beautiful than Persephone and that Hades would return to her.
Ironically though, another nymph lover of Hades' Leuce who was turned into a white poplar tree after she died, became Persephone's sacred plant. It was also suggested that she was a companion of the goddess.
When King Kreon refused to allow the burial of those who died in the Seven Against Thebes, Persephone and Hades inflicted Thebes with a plague, stopped only when two maidens were sacrificed.
Other stories that involve Persephone are Peirithoos' attempt to abduct her and the sacrifice of Macaria. Peirithoos was king of the Lapiths and a friend of Theseus, they decided they deserved daughters of Zeus as wives and so abducted Helen of Troy for Theseus and then went to the Underworld to abduct Persephone for Peirithoos. Hades received them politely and bid them to sit, they sat down on chairs of forgetfulness and found themselves bound their by serpents. When Heracles came for Cerberus he was able to rescue Theseus but in most accounts he could not save Peirithoos because his crime was too great.
Macaria was a daughter of Heracles who with her siblings fled her father's rival King Eurystheus after her father's death. They found sanctuary with King Demophon of Athens but Eurystheus threatened war unless he was given the siblings. An oracle promised victory for Athens only if a maiden was sacrificed to Persephone. Not willing to have a lottery and see someone else die for her, Macaria volunteered and was sacrificed and a spring was named after her.
Persephone's companions were said to be Hecate, who regularly accompanied her from the Underworld to her mother and was her minister, and Leuce/Leuka/Leukippe, an Okeanid who Hades loved and was changed into a white poplar after her death. Before her abduction she was with nymphs, Artemis and Athena.
She is usually shown as young, beautiful, robed and carrying a sheaf of grain or a sceptre. Oppian called her dark eyed and in her role as the Underworld Queen she was known as 'awful' or 'dread' Persephone. She was also called Queen of the Shades.
The poplar tree, white rose, Asphodel plant, pomegranate and narcissus plant were all sacred to her as were bats, talking birds, rams and monkeys.
Her Roman counterpart was Proserpina/Proserpine a fertility goddess who was the partner of Liber, the god of viticulture and wine, before she became the wife of Pluto. In one tale a man named Valerius found his children sick and prayed to the gods for help, they told him to go to Tarentum and pray to the Underworld gods there. He obeyed, dug the foundations for a temple but found the remains of one there so rebuilt it for Proserpina and Pluto. After this his children recovered. In her abduction myth it was Venus who started the whole thing, ordering Cupid to hit Pluto with an arrow because she wanted him to know love.
