„Hades comes in a chariot. We are not told anything about his face or his body. He is more like a phantom, a dark power of the endless abyss. No desire for Persephone is expressed, no compliment is granted, and there is no attempt to lure Persephone with words of love. This violent groom does not come with gifts. After all, he is a taker, and not a giver, at all times.”

- The Homeric Hymns, Apostolos N. Athanassakis

Genuinely wish there was one (1) single modern retelling of Hades and Persephone in which Hades isn't 10,000 years old and Persephone isn't one day past her eighteenth birthday

Hades’ whispered vows to Persephone are taken from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and I am NOT OKAY 😭😭😭

On the Homeric Hymns to Demeter (i) // Introduction, Charles Boer's translations of the Homeric Hymns, 1987

Everyone is hurting now that Demeter is mad, and that seems to be Her purpose — there is no food to be had from Her earth. A deal is made and She gets Her way, She gets Her daughter back, but not before Persephone is given a pomegranate seed to eat by Her new husband, requiring Her to return to Hades for one winter season each year, when Demeter will again withhold Her crops. Some might say Hades is too generous; most husbands would not go so far to comfort the pathology of their mothers-in-law. But it is Demeter's point of view that we must take through this Hymn, Her feelings, Her attitudes, Her sufferings that we share.

To the extent that we share them, we are Her followers. She gives our suffering meaning. She shows us the way

I’ve been working on a retelling of Abduction of Persephone and there are things I might add here:

This might be a black comedy work (inspirations taken from The Good Place and other American/British comedy shows)

Persephone isn’t the “Goddess of Spring” but called and praised as one

Kore is Perse’s nickname

Hades’ design is based on Jemaine Clement (I kept imagining that)

Hades is sort of an antagonist in my retelling (he’s the main antagonist at first then became a supporting character)

Persephone wears in blue green motifs in the mortal realm

Perse wasn’t aware that she’s Zeus’ daughter until she and Hades had an argument about marriage

Perse and Hades’ relationship resembled Eleanor and Michael’s from The Good Place (their role are similar to architect but Hades focused a bit on parties and sometimes punishing)

Demeter isn’t an overbearing/overprotective mother but a cool mom to Perse and Dionysus (Perse and Dio are twins and they’re both Zeus’ kids)

Perse and Dem have no knowledge of Perse being married off to Hades (Dem was in the mortal realm when the arrangement happens)

The retellings are getting worse....

Girl Calendar (September) + Girl Calendar (December); collage, gouache, and ink on paper; 2023.

[Image description: Two collages made of the September and December pages of an Art Nouveau calendar. The figures in the calendar pictures have been cut away. Behind the September cutout is a painting of a field with a black circle in the centre. Below it text reads "September offered a grungy take with earthy tones." and "Persephone is a legacy perpetually reinvented." Beneath is a drawing of abstract botanical forms merging with human heads and limbs. Three clocks in the shape of insects move through it. To one side, text reads "it's the only flower I can think of that's really in charge" and underneath,  "What an epic retelling of our collective past!!" and "whatever happened to Luna Woman Power??" Behind the December cutout is a black wash of ink with dark red circles and a white rectangle in the centre. Text below reads "December: a moment of eternity flickering every second." Underneath is a drawing of fleshy shapes like organs and veins, each containing a miniature watch. The watch in the centre is shaped like a fruit, and is surrounded by teeth - text beneath it reads "#perpetual." A human head connected to the organs says "anything and everything that happens is in my control." To one side, text reads "modern brides want something edgier" and underneath "… or an exploration of our possible futures?"]

Every time I see someone twisting Hades abducting Persephone into something romantic and claiming it to be real myths, I want to recite the Homeric Hymn to Demeter like a monk reciting sutras to ward off spirits.

Call me crazy but I think I havr a theory why romanticize Persephone and Hades: most ppl who do romanticize them, are teenagers,and they have seen that Hades is the """most gentle out of Zeus and Poseidon" and because he """treated Persephone well (except the kidnapping) and he didn't cheat on her",and ppl view him,having a "i'm done with everyone" (example: effy stonem,etc) plus adding the fact that he is despicted to be dressed in black, have stuff that ppl would consider "goth",have 3 dogs.

People view them as that trope dynamic of grumpy goth/flower sunshine with the grumpy goth having a soft spot for her.

Which is kinda weird?? Considering they are gods and could be considered insulting for a culture(?. Idk.

And this view they have,gained popularity when Lore Olympus came out.

Idk just a theory I had.

Yeah I agree, it's really insulting when people reduce a religious figure down to tropes and treat them like they're fictional characters. And don't look at them through the cultural framework of the country they originate from.

It's belittling to Persephone as well, tbh? Because they act like she's just a sweet innocent little ingenue who sprouted pretty flowers, when she was in fact very fierce and threatening as the Queen of the Underworld, and was feared as much as her husband. And not to mention the fact that there is evidence that she was a cthonic deity before Hades.

And Demeter, oh boy, don't even get me STARTED on Demeter.

I think the idea

"Demeter loved Persephone dearly and wanted to keep her safe"

And the idea

"Demeter was overbearing and being in the underworld was a freeing experience for Persephone"

Can exist in the same narrative of the original Greek myth.

“In the Hymn Zeus attempts to impose on Persephone a form of marriage new to Olympus, the divine equivalent of a mortal institution familiar in Homer: in modern terms we would categorize it as patriarchal and virilocal exogamy (a marriage between members of two different social groups arranged by the father of the bride in which the bride resides with her husband). Although in the Hymn marriage already exists among mortals on earth, the institution was not always the general rule among the gods. Rape, incest, and promiscuity are perhaps the dominant modes of procreation among divinities in the early phases of the universe during which the majority of gods were born and acquired their powers. Zeus and Demeter, a brother and sister, produced Persephone in precisely this fashion. Although Zeus and Hera (also a brother and sister) and other gods are represented as married, especially once the rule of Zeus over the cosmos has been established, divine marriage, if it functions with any consistency, did not function as earthly marriage does.  Indeed, divine existence is partly defined in epic by the gods' ability to break the rules of human society and avoid the consequences that would have occurred in a mortal context. Mortal marriage in epic entailed an exchange of gifts by the bride's guardian and her spouse-to-be used for the benefit of one or both participating families and a formal ceremony followed by cohabitation in one household and carefully regulated sexual engagement for the purpose of producing legitimate heirs for the husband's lineage. Inheritance and sexual fidelity could not and did not ever play the same role among immortal beings, whose need to procreate or to regulate procreation did not match that of mortals. . . . The structure of the universe remained stable precisely because Zeus did not father a male heir who could replace him.

In contrast to mortal marriages, neither divine marriages nor rapes required the same kind of change of residence to which the mortal bride was often subject; nor did they require loss of independence on the part of the female Olympian, who continued to exercise her own perogatives in the sphere allotted to her. In other words, because Olympian gods live as one community, their marriages are in essence endogamous (between insiders) and do not require the separation of the daughter from her natal family. Olympian goddesses may be said in Homer or Hesiod to reside in the homes of their spouses. Aphrodite, for example, is said in Odyssey 8 to commit adultery with Ares in the house of Hephaistos, who has paid her father gifts (318, hedna) for the bride. But epic frequently treats these residences largely as a place for sleeping (see Iliad 1. 605-ll), and the regular presence of Olympian goddesses at the assembly of Zeus indicates that a separate residence in no way isolates them from the divine community or inevitably subordinates them to their husbands. . . .

Persephone's marriage with Hades might appear to perpetuate this Olympian endogamy, because it is a marriage to the father's (and mother's) brother. But the inaccessibility of Hades makes it geographically impossible for the marriage to function endogamously. Thus Persephone is subjected to an extreme form of virilocal exogamy in which she is permanently denied access to her parents. As with other aspects of the Hymn, this marriage, in which the bride undergoes a symbolic death in the transition from one household to another, brings Persephone closer to human experience. For despite the mitigating conclusion of the Hymn, Demeter and Persephone remain forever marked by the encounter with mortal limits: death, marriage, the relentless cycle of the seasons (in cult the goddesses are worshiped for guaranteeing the regularity of the seasons, yet the seasons, insofar as they are linked to Persephone's appearance and disappearance, limit the mother/daughter relation as well).

The opening scene of the Hymn hints strongly at Persephone's readiness for sexuality, yet it chooses to envision her marriage as a deceptive and cruel trick foisted by violence on an idyllic mother/daughter relationship. Zeus gives Persephone to Hades without the consent or knowledge of either mother or daughter—as may often have been the case in human society (as opposed to Nausikaa's Utopian Phaiakia) at the time. Helios then becomes Zeus's apologist, as the father of the bride keeps his distance from mother and daughter—and hence from the poem's audience—throughout the narrative. Hades needs a wife, and as her uncle and Zeus's brother, as well as a powerful god who can bestow honors on his wife, he is an appropriate husband for Persephone. Yet despite Helios's apology, Hades' abduction does not function as a legitimate marriage. The abduction includes elements in a normal marriage rite—an engyc or pledge of marriage between father and groom and the transfer of the bride by chariot to her new residence — only to emphasize the abnormality of a marriage in which the bride, because she initially does not eat in the underworld, has not fully engaged in the final stage necessary to legitimate Athenian marriage at least, cohabitation (synoikeiri). In Attic marriage . . . the bride ate a quince (and probably a wedding cake made from sesame seeds) on arrival at the groom's house; the bride's acceptance of food (trophe) was a form of acknowledging the groom's authority (kyreia) over her. Another aspect of the standard marriage rite was the carrying of torches by the bride's mother; in the Hymn the bride's mother Demeter carries torches alone and after the event.

The abduction comes to resemble marriage more fully only at the point of the final compromise, when Persephone eats and Hades mitigates his original violence with persuasion—a promise of honors to his bride. It is unclear whether Persephone has consummated her marriage—we find her in Hades' bed, an unwilling partner (343-44) still longing for her mother. Before giving Persephone the pomegranate seed, Hades urges her not to remain depressed but to feel kindly toward him (360-62). Plutarch says that Solon decreed that Attic brides should eat quinces to keep their mouth and their speech sweet (Moralia 138D and 279F). The eating of the quince by the Attic bride may also have helped to awaken her desire. As with Solon's quince, Persephone's eating of the pomegranate seed may signal a shift to seduction, a careful preparation of the bride for sexuality rather than violence. Yet even here the language that Persephone uses to describe her final eating of the pomegranate seed echoes that used to describe the original abduction: "He stealthily put in my mouth a food honey-sweet, a pomegranate seed, and compelled me against my will and by force to eat it" (411-13). Thus, although from the male perspective Hades' abduction is entirely acceptable, the Hymn continues to stress the female resistance throughout. The Hymn thus takes apart the benign cultural institution we see functioning apparently without tension on earth and shows the price paid by mother and daughter in accepting for the first time a marriage that requires a degree of separation and subordination to the male unfamiliar in the divine world.”

 - The Homeric "Hymn to Demeter": Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays

An Observation

I'm reading a bunch of books about plot structure again, and one of them was specifically about breaking down plots to their basic elements in a way that lets you see how two works can have the same 'skeleton' while appearing wildly different. Looking at it from that angle, it occurred to me:

The stories of Demeter and Clytemnestra follow roughly the same plot - they just have different outcomes.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we get the story of Demeter and Persephone - the story that formed the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Persephone is picking flowers when she is lured astray by one planted as a trap for her; once she tries to get it, Hades pops up from nowhere, yanks her onto his chariot, and goes off to the Underworld with her, having gotten permission from Zeus to forcibly marry her without consulting with Demeter, her mother. There's scholarly discussion about how this could be symbolic of the real grief experienced by ancient Greek mothers and daughters, who might well never see each other again after the daughter is married off, but in its own context - the lord of the Underworld claims the Maiden, plunging her mother into grief and anger, which turns into Demeter blighting the world until the other gods come to an accommodation with her which partially restores Persephone to her. Ultimately, however, Demeter is plunged back into mourning every half-year when Persephone must once more return to Hades, which results in winter for everyone else.

In the Oresteia, we open with Clytemnestra plotting murder; this is because, in the backstory, her husband Agamemnon tricked her into bringing their daughter Iphigeneia to him by pretending he has arranged an honorable marriage for the girl, only to sacrifice Iphigeneia to the goddess Artemis instead once he has her. Cue Clytemnestra plotting her revenge: she spends the whole Trojan War fantasizing about tricking Agamemnon into a position where she can kill him, just as he tricked her into putting Iphigeneia into a position to be sacrificed to Artemis. Fast-forward ten years; the Trojan War is over, Agamemnon comes home, Clytemnestra proceeds to get her revenge, and she and her boyfriend (who also wanted to avenge wrongs done to his family - specifically, he had some older siblings who met a rather gristly end at the hands of Agamemnon's already-deceased father) take over the government, with negative results for the polis, if we're to believe Electra in Libation-Bearers, anyway.

Agamemnon is, in a way, roughly analogous to Hades: a superior being (Zeus, Artemis) gives a powerful Figure From Greek Mythology (Hades, Agamemnon) permission to send a young woman to the Underworld, and in the process, her mother is tricked and bereaved. As a result, both Demeter and Clytemnestra go nuclear in their pursuit of revenge: Demeter inflicts massive crop damage, fully prepared to commit genocide upon humanity solely because the other gods enjoy receiving offerings from humans, and Clytemnestra breaks her marriage vows and then lures Agamemnon to his death. However, at that point, their stories diverge pretty sharply: even Zeus himself is apparently unable to force Demeter to come to Olympus or to allow anything to grow again against her will, and he is not able to prevent her from bringing winter back down upon the world every half-year whenever Persephone is re-removed from her due to the laws of godly physics as applied to pomegranates, because why not. Clytemnestra, however, is not a goddess - she is not even the child of a god or goddess, even though her own twin sister, Helen, is. Clytemnestra is a powerful woman...but just, at the end of the day, a human woman. Therefore, her revenge backfires onto her horribly: she who committed murder to avenge one of her daughters (Iphigeneia) is murdered by her son (Orestes) as part of a plot which included her surviving daughter (Electra). As a shade, she raises the Furies against Orestes, so that these ancient goddesses of vengeance drive him nearly mad...but because a greater power (Athena) can and does exert power (at one point, she threatens the Eumenides with Zeus's lightning-bolts, which she has access to, if they don't agree to her arbitration of the quarrel) over everyone else involved. Zeus could not curb Demeter, but his daughter can curb the Furies and bring them fully into line with the patriarchal system***.

There's stories in there. I know it. More than one. Just to sift them out and find something to do with them....

***For an interpretation of Oresteia which makes some sense out of the ending of Eumenides other than "lol, women unimportant and stupid," there's an interesting lecture by the Canadian classicist Ian Johnston, which can be viewed here: http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/lectures/oresteialecture.html

I quite like it, along with much of Professor Johnston's work, though it's still hard to come away without the impression that Aeschylus miiiiight have had Issues with women. However, this would hardly make Aeschylus the last writer whose skill (and point) was undermined by his prejudices.

hi besties, im doing a module on Persephone rn and i am being violently reminded how much i love the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. what are y'all's favourite commentaries on it? or favourite pieces of scholarship? i would like to read. everything. 😌💖

ok hear me out. i was rereading the homeric hymn to demeter earlier tonight as one does, and something stood out to me:

at the beginning, before she's kidnapped, it's mentioned that persephone is picking roses, crocuses, violets, irises, hyacinths, and narcissuses.

then she's kidnapped and forced into a role as a wife that she never asked for. when she finally returns home, she recounts the story to her mother like this:

all of the same flowers are mentioned again, except for violets, which have been replaced by lilies - which you could feasibly connect to the creation story of lilies, which centers around hera being forced to nurse hercules and its associations with coercion into a role of woman/mother, but i digress. point is, i saw that the violets were gone, and my mind went here:

is this intentional? i have no idea. i just think it's fascinating. excuse me while i go cry over girls from literature who lose their innocence and their violets far too soon.

A lot of people assume that I hate demeter bc i dont believe in the homeric hymm to her but that isnt the case at all. I think she was a mother who had the primal rage of a mother. She wanted nothing more than to protect her daughter. All she really knew of hades was the stories told about him, so if she had every right to assume he kidnapped her ((I dont think he did)) and she had every right to want her back. I dont hate demeter, i hate that one hymm and how it portrays the deity I devoted my life to ((hades)) I think demeter was a mom who was defending her daughter, but is also think hades was just a man who loved a girl who loved him back

What sucks so much about HadesxPersephone retellings is that the kidnapping of Persephone is one of my favorite myths. It was the first one I learned about. I read a children's book in my school library when I was like 7 about it. And that kids' version, without a doubt is more close to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter than like Lore Olympus, Neon Gods, or any adult retelling of the myth. Obviously, I don't remember much of it now. But I remember most of it following Demeter and having you sympathize with her and having Persephone long to be with her mother. I remember Hades tricking Persephone into eating the pomegranate seed(a more kid friendly than having him forcing her to eat it like in the original).

THIS!!!!

LISTEN TO THIS PERSON