Once upon a time, there lived a Greek goddess named Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Demeter was the god of harvest. She was a very important goddess to the ancient Greek people because she farmed a lot of their food. Persephone was a beautiful young lady who was admired by many gods however, Demeter had an obsessive love for her daughters and kept all of them away. The most persistent suitor was Hades, the god of the Underworld. He was a middle-aged man, living in the dark, among the shadows of the Dead. But his heart softened when he saw Persephone and was amazed by her youth, beauty, and freshness. When he asked Demeter to marry her, Demeter got furious and said there wasn’t the slightest chance for that to happen. Hades was heartbroken and decided to get Persephone no matter what.

One day, while Persephone was picking flowers with her friends in a valley, she found the most enchanting narcissus she had ever seen. As she bent down to pick the flower, the earth beneath her feet suddenly opened, and through the gap Hades himself came out on his chariot with black horses. Hades grabbed her before she could even scream for help and descended into his underworld while the gap in the earth closed after them.

The other girls had not seen anything because everything happened too quickly. They didn’t have a clue what happened to Persephone. The whole incident, however, had been witnessed by Zeus, father of the maiden and brother of the hades, as well as by Helios, god of the Sun. Zeus decided to keep silent about the whole thing to prevent a fight with his brother while Helios wisely thought it better not to get involved in anything that didn’t concern him.

A distraught and heartbroken Demeter wandered the earth looking for her daughter until her good friend Hecate, goddess of wilderness and childbirth, advised her to seek help from Helios, the all-seeing Sun god, to find her daughter. Helios felt sorry for Demeter, who was crying and pleading with him to help her. So, she told Demeter that Persephone had been kidnapped by Hades. When she heard that, Demeter got angry and wanted to take revenge but Helios suggested that it was not a bad thing for Persephone to be the wife of Hades and queen of the dead.

Demeter, however, could not let it go. She was furious at this insult and deeply believed that Hades was not the right husband for her sweet daughter. She also got angry at Zeus for not telling her this. To punish the gods and to grieve, Demeter decided to take a long leave from her duties as the goddess of harvest and fertility, with devastating consequences. The earth began to dry up, harvests failed, plants lost their fruitfulness, animals were dying for lack of food and famine spread to the whole earth, resulting in untold misery.

The cries of the people who were suffering reached Olympus and the divine ears of Zeus. The mighty god finally realized that if he didn’t do something about this, all humanity would disappear. So, he tried to find another solution to both calm Demeter and please Hades. He promised Demeter to restore Persephone to her if it could be proven that the maiden stays with Hades against her will. Otherwise, Persephone belongs to her husband.

The crafty Hades learned of this agreement and tricked his reluctant bride into eating a few seeds of the pomegranate fruit. This was the food of the Underworld and every time someone ate even a few seeds of this, then, after a while, he would miss life in the Underworld. When the gathering in front of Zeus took place and Persephone was asked where she would like to live, she answered she wanted to live with her husband. When Demeter heard that, she got infuriated and accused Hades that some how he had tricked her daughter.

A great fight followed and Demeter threatened that she would never again make the earth fertile and everyone on Earth would die. To put an end to this quarrel, Zeus decided that Persephone would spend half of the year with her husband Hades, and the other half with her mother on Olympus. This alternative pleased none of the two opponents, nevertheless, they had no other option but to accept it.

 During the six months that Persephone spent in the Underworld, her mother was sad and not in the mood to deal with the harvest. According to the ancient Greeks, these were the months of Autumn and Winter when the land was not fertile and did not give crops.

 Whenever Persephone went to Olympus to live with her mother, Demeter would shine from happiness and the land would become fertile again and fruitful. These were the months of Spring and Summer. 

Therefore, this myth was created to explain the change of the seasons, the eternal cycle of Nature’s death and rebirth.

Alexis Karama, OG