Historical Context
Let’s start by discussing the major ancient sources that talk about the rape / abduction of Persephone: [1] Hymn 2 to Demeter (~700 BC), book five of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (~8 AD), and Claudian’s epic poem De raptu Proserpinae (~395-7 AD). There are a few differences between them, but they generally tell the same story.
In Hymn to Demeter, after Persephone is abducted by Hades and trapped in the Underworld, Demeter (her mother) is devastated and travels the world, searching for her. Finally, as a last-ditch effort to get her daughter back, she (as the goddess of agriculture and vegetation) prevents any plants from growing, leading to widespread famine and starvation. Due to the impending threat of the complete annihilation of the human race, Zeus (Persephone's father and the king of the gods) is forced to take action. He confronts Hades (his brother, who is also the lord of the Underworld) and asks him to let Persephone return to the surface. Before this happens, though, Persephone is forced into eating some pomegranate seeds which, due to some strange law, means she cannot leave. Eventually, it's decided, as a compromise, that Persephone can come home but only for two-thirds of the year. In her joy of being reunited with her daughter, Demeter not only returns the vegetation to the Earth, but also teaches humanity her mysteries that promise them untold happiness in both life and death. [2]
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a bit more embellished and dramatic, but continues in the same basic way. Ceres (aka Demeter) still traverses the earth trying to find her daughter, then appeals to Jove (aka Zeus) to have her returned. This time, however, Proserpina (aka Persephone) eats the pomegranate seeds herself, although she didn't understand the consequences of her actions. It still ends the same, with Persephone being returned but only for part of the year.
Claudian's epic poem, on the other hand, stops abruptly, with Ceres (Demeter) still searching in vain for her daughter, who remains trapped in the Underworld indefinitely. It's assumed that he just died before he could finish it, though.
As mentioned earlier, Bruce Lincoln explains in his article, “The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation," that Persephone's story is likely meant to reflect the life of the average Greek woman at the time (223). According to Mark Cartright's entry for The World History Encyclopedia, women weren't considered full citizens (lacking the right to own property, vote, or otherwise meaningfully participate in society) and their lives were largely decided by the men around them. For example, a girl's father was in charge of arranging her marriage – neither she nor her mother had any say in the matter. When it was time, the husband-to-be would simply abduct her and do with her as he pleased (Lincoln 226-7).
Unsurprisingly, this is also the case with Persephone. In the Hymn, when Demeter asks Helios (the all-seeing god of the sun) what happened to her daughter, he responds that Zeus planned for Hades to abduct Persephone, emphasizing that she shouldn't worry and that Hades would be a decent husband because of his high status as King of the Underworld. Again, all that mattered in regards to marriage in Ancient Greece was status and continuing the man’s bloodline — love had nothing to do with it, unlike how we in the West tend to see marriage today. The best a woman could really hope for was to eventually develop a sort of friendship with her husband (who was free to seek passion or pleasure outside of the relationship with whoever he wanted), while she tended to the household and the kids (Cartwright).
In fact, interestingly enough, the Eleusinian Mystery cult, apparently established by Demeter herself at the end of the Hymn, provided Ancient Greek women a rare reprieve from the monotony of their everyday lives confined to the home. According to Helene P. Foley's 1993 book Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays, both men and women of all ages and classes were allowed to join the cult (as long as they spoke Greek), but many important festivals allowed only women to attend, giving them unprecedented freedom, even if only briefly. For example, one of these, the Thesmophoria, was a several day long festival where women would gather and reenact various scenes from the myth, such as telling each dirty jokes (reflecting a part in the Hymn where a woman tries to cheer up Demeter while she was traveling the Earth in disguise) and sacrificing piglets (who were apparently sucked into the Earth at the same time as Persephone). These behaviors (as well as simply being in public in the first place) were normally prohibited for women, which makes this all the more notable (Foley 74-5). The unique independence offered by these rites also led to parodies, like Aristophanes' comedic play, Women at the Thesmophoria, which depicts women using these festivals as a pretext to hold their own political assembly, trying another playwright for his crimes against womenkind (Foley 72). Above all, though, these rites were one of the few times during the year that mothers and daughters were reunited after marriage, which is really quite poetic, isn't it?
Another interesting thing to note is the symbolism of the pomegranate and its seeds.
In Ancient Greek literature, pomegranates were often used to denote blood – not only of war, but also menstruation, loss of virginity, and childbirth. Fruits in general also often evoke images of fertility and sexuality, with the word for “seeds" being, both in Ancient Greek and modern English, a common euphemism for testicles or sperm (Lincoln 234). Keeping this in mind, before her abduction in the Hymn, Persephone is only referred to as a maiden or Demeter's daughter (with occasional descriptions of her being “trim-ankled" or “deep-bosomed," emphasizing her beauty). It's only afterwards, when she's in the Underworld, that she's called Persephone. Lincoln suggests that this is because she is, in fact, no longer a maiden, so this placeholder name no longer applies. He further explains that it's a common custom across many cultures for young women to change their name after they've completed their rites of passage, namely loss of their virginity (229). In Western culture, for example, women are typically expected to take their husband's last name after marriage. While we lack proper records of daily life in the ancient world, this may suggest that something similar occurred in Ancient Greece, where a young woman would only receive a personal name after marriage (230).
Foley provides another explanation: traditional Athenian marriages required women to move in their husband's families and involved a feast as soon as she arrived at her new home, which symbolized her “acknowledgment of the groom's authority over her" (108). Persephone's initial refusal to eat while in the Underworld is therefore seen as a refusal of the marriage entirely and her being forced to eat the seeds mirrors her abduction and loss of personal autonomy (109).
Either way, with this additional context, we can see that it's not just for some arbitrary reason that Persephone is confined to the Underworld after eating the pomegranate seeds – they serve as a symbol for her transition in life from free maiden to confined wife.
That's part of why I think it's so important to keep the actual historical context of the myth in mind while reading about it or any adaptations. It's like what I said earlier, people only seem to care about the fake Ancient Greece and Rome that exist only in their heads, discarding anything that interrupts their rose-tinted fantasies informed by what they personally want to see or various sanitized versions made up to the more "child-friendly." But ignoring reality only does a diservice to everyone: ancient, modern, and every time in between!We need to look at what little evidence we have and try to understand what life really was like back then and think critically about the conclusions they made, their alleged aesthetic choices, and how people were treated back then, rather than blindly adapting these ancient symbols, like we'll see in later chapters. (In other words, despite seemingly popular opinion, it's really not “empowering" for Persephone to eat the seeds herself…)
Endnotes
This is a common subject of discourse about Persephone, so I might as well talk about it now. In English, her myth is commonly referred to as "The Rape of Persephone," while, in Latin, the word used is raptus, which would more closely translate to "abduction" rather than our modern concept of "rape." Some argue that this means that she never was raped and, as you'll see as you read the other chapters, this is used to justify many "alternative interpretations" of her story, but I want to clarify that this alleged attempt to avoid historical revisionism, is itself a form of historical revisionism.
For example, in Claudian's epic poem, Persephone says:
O fortunate are those girls whom other ravishers
Have borne off! At least they have delight in the usual daylight.
But along with my virginity, the sky is taken from me;
My purity is snatched away with the light, and I must depart from earth
As I am led captive into slavery for the Stygian tyrant. (Lincoln 228)Similarly, in Hymn to Demeter, it states:
She was sitting in bed with Hades, her bedmate,
Much against her will, and yearning for her mother. (Lincoln 228)Yes, the modern idea of consent did not exist in Ancient Greece (mostly because women were literally seen as property and not as actual human beings with rights), but I still think these examples make it clear that she was forced by Hades to have sex against her will – ie: what we would now refer to as rape. Just because this is a difficult topic to discuss doesn't mean we should completely brush over it or try to pretend it doesn't exist! Just because a practice is common in a culture doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful, sexist, or otherwise beyond reproach! ➥
This was a super condensed version of the story! If you were interested, a more in-depth overview of the classical sources and the differences between them can be found here. Otherwise, Hymn to Demeter is fairly short, interesting, and surprisingly readable. ➥
Works Cited
Anonymous. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. "Hymn 2 to Demeter." Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online.
Cartwright, Mark. "Women in Ancient Greece." World History Encyclopedia, 2016. Online.
Foley, Helene P. Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton University Press, 1994. Digital.
Lincoln, Bruce. "The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women's Initiation." The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 72, No. 3/4 (Jul. - Oct., 1979), pp. 223-235. Online.