Persephone

Persephone was the Queen of the Underworld and the goddess of spring. She is the daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter, and Zeus, as well as the wife of Hades, King of the Underworld.

Hades and Persephone
One day, while Persephone was frolicking through the fields of her mother with her nymph friends, the ground near her suddenly parted. Out sprang Hades, who grabbed her and dragged her away to the Underworld to be his queen.

Demeter, distraught, searched all over the world for her daughter, but could not find her. Her anguish caused the seasons to suddenly stop changing altogether, and fields all over the world began to die. Learning that Zeus had played a part in arranging Persephone's kidnapping, Demeter refused to return the seasons until her daughter had been returned to her. Zeus consented and sent Demeter to the Underworld to retrieve her daughter. However, Persephone had eaten some seeds from a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld. Because of this, Persephone was forced to spend half of year back on earth with her mother, but she must then spend the other half of the year in the Underworld with Hades (Hamilton, 2002).

In Myths
In the myth of Adonis, Aphrodite had a young son by the name of Adonis, god of Beauty. He was so beautiful that Aphrodite wanted to hide him from the rest of the gods, so she gave him to Persephone to take care of. Persephone, however, ended up falling in love with her charge and refused to return him. Zeus settled this by allowing Adonis to spend a third of the year with Persephone, a third of the year with his mother, and a third of the year to himself. Usually, Adonis used his third to spend time with his mother. In other versions, he is not the son of Aphrodite, but rather a handsome youth that Aphrodite and Persephone fight over.

Persephone's wrath is shown in the myth of the Minthe, a nymph who had become a concubine to Hades. Furious that the nymph was sleeping with her husband, Persephone trampled Minthe underfoot, changing her into a plant. This plant became known as "garden-mint" (Atsma, 2014).

Persephone appears with her husband in Ovid's Metamorphoses in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After Eurydice dies on her wedding day, Orpheus travels to the Underworld to retrieve her. He makes it all the way to the throne room of the King and Queen of the Underworld. He pleads to them in song to let his bride return to the world of the living, and the two immortals are moved by his plea. They allow Eurydice to follow behind Orpheus to the exit of the Underworld, but if Orpheus turns around to look at her before they reach the light of day, then Eurydice would be returned to the Underworld forever. Orpheus agrees and almost makes it, but he turns around before he fully exits the Underworld, and Eurydice is reclaimed (Ovid, trans. Kline 2000).

Persephone is also featured in the myth of Eros and Psyche, while Psyche is forced to perform many tasks given to her by Aphrodite. At one point, the love goddess instructs Psyche to go to the Underworld and ask Persephone for a small portion of her beauty cream. Psyche travels to the parlor of Persephone, kneeling and asking for the cream. Persephone gives Psyche the cream in a small container, but tells her not to open it. Psyche, her curiosity getting the better of her, opens the container and is suddenly knocked out cold by a sleep spell. She is eventually found and revived by Eros.

Persephone's Children
Five different children are attributed to Persephone. Two were sired by Zeus, who seduced Persephone while in the form of a snake. First was the hunter Zagreus, whom Zeus tried to place upon an Olympian throne. He was immediately torn apart, but his heart was saved. Some accounts say he was reborn through Semele as the god Dinoysus.

The second child was Melinoe, a minor goddess of the Underworld. She was a symbol of mental unrest, nightmares, and madness.

The final three children were sired by Hades, and they were the Erinyes, better known as The Furies: Alecto ("relentless"), Megara ("to grudge"), and Tisiphone ("vengeance") (Atsma, 2014).

Metamorphoses
Persephone appears briefly in the play Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman during the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. She is seen lying with her husband as Orpheus pleads to them to let Eurydice return to the land of the living. She is played by the First Woman (Zimmerman, 2002).