The Abduction of Persephone Myth

The Abduction of Persephone
According to Greek Mythology, Persephone, the queen of the underworld, was

the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of harvest and fertility. She was also
called Kore, which means "maiden" and grew up to be a lovely girl attracting the
attention of many gods. However, Demeter had an obsessive love for her only
daughter and kept all men away from her.
The most persisting suitor of Persephone was Hades, the god of the
Underworld. He was a hard, 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
daughter, Demeter got furious and said there was not the slightest chance for that to
happen. Hades was heart-broken and decided to get Persephone no matter what.
One day, while the young girl was playing and picking flowers along with her
friends in a valley, she beheld the most enchanting narcissus she had ever seen. As
she stooped down to pick the flower, the earth beneath her feet suddenly cleaved
open and through the gap Hades himself came out on his chariot with black horses.
Hades grabbed the lovely maiden before she could scream for help and descended
into his underworld kingdom while the gap in the earth closed after them.
Desperately looking for Persephone
The other girls had not seen anything because everything happened very
quickly. They did not have a clue for the sudden disappearance of Persephone. The
whole incident, however, had been witnessed by Zeus, father of the maiden and
brother of the abductor, 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 did not 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 for the help of Helios, the all-seeing Sun god, in order to find
her daughter. Helios felt sorry for Demeter, who was crying and pleading him to
help her. Thus, she revealed her 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 such a bad thing for Persephone to be the wife of Hades
and queen of the dead.
Trying to find a solution
Demeter, however, could not let it go. She was furious at this insult and
deeply believed that Hades, who after all had only dead people for company, was
not the right husband for her sweet daughter. She also got angry at Zeus for not
having revealed this to her. To punish gods and to grief, Demeter decided to take a
long and indefinite 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 would not do something
about his wife's wrath, all humanity would disappear. Thus, he tried to find another
solution to both calm Demeter and please Hades. He promised Demeter to restore
Persephone to her if it can be proved that the maiden stays with Hades against her
will. Otherwise, Persephone belongs to her husband.
The final solution
The crafty Hades learned this agreement and tricked his reluctant bride, who
was crying all day and night from despair, to eat 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 somehow, 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 on this
quarrel, Zeus decided that Persephone would spend half months with her husband
in Hades and half months with her mother on Olympus. This alternative pleased
none of the two opponents, nevertheless that had no other option but accept it.
@gracebangayan

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The Abduction of Persephone

According to Greek Mythology, Persephone, the queen of the underworld, was

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