I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
Is OP aware that oh so many books exist on this subject?
And that almost universally the ones authored by people with doctorates in classicism and mythology disagree with OP?
Including the… epic hymn that first told this story? You know what’s in that original source material… right?
Abducted, yes. Demeter mourned? Definitely. Rape, no.
So here’s some info on Ancient Greek wedding traditions which (oh my stars and garters!!) included abducting the bride. With the father’s permission, which Hades got before he took her away.
Here’s a whole book on the subject of Ancient Greek wedding custom and its conflation with funeral rites. (Which sounds a bit like Hades and Persephone to anyone who’s ever dabbled in things like explication and context)
Here’s a link to another book that talks about Persephone’s rise to power as a result of her willingly eating the pomegranate seeds.
Oh shit!!
Here’s a whole bunch of myths and hymns that talk about her Queen of the Underworld badassery!!
Holy pug tacos Batman!!
Here’s another book about the myth focusing on the seasonal religious and liminal rites. WHICH TAKE PLACE IN THE DRY SUMMER (not the fucking winter), which you know if you read a book.Way to go, OP!
All these fucking books! What could anyone possibly do with them all?!?!?!?! Do you eat books to absorb their powers instead of read them?
A better guess would be that you got into a moral panic over the name of a certain Renaissance statue and maybe after reading three pages of Edith Hamilton or the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article. And then used that to castigate and demean not only the people who actually take their limited time to create gorgeous art but also to denigrate modern day worshippers of Persephone and Hades?
Maybe next time, you stringy piece of over-boiled okra, you might want to take your own advice and pick up a book, instead of reducing the feared and respected Queen of the Underworld who held power equal to or in many interpretations GREATER than her husband into a meaningless pastiche of female disenfranchisement that you seemingly plucked from your own ass.
JESUS CHRIST THANK YOU
I don’t often reblog posts of people getting owned, but when I do…
man the ancient greeks didn’t dare to speak persephone’s name she was that powerful and venerated (they called her Kore, “the maiden”), hades didn’t get that honour
Rebagel for those book links, I find the Persephone and Hades stuff on here fascinating and I want to research it more
Book links, owning and the sheer badassery that is Persephone.
reblog forever
Reblogging for the links until this misapprehension finally ceases.
See also: Seduction and Rape in Greek Myth and Predatory Goddesses, both by classicist Mary Lefkowicz.
k but hades DOES get that honor. “Hades” means “rich guy” (because underground, where all the gold and stuff is). It’s just such an old epithet it’s sorta become his name.
And “rape” in the context of ancient greek/roman myths, usually means capture or snatching away, from a Latin verb with that meaning. The connotation was often snatching away women for the purpose of marriage, but it did NOT specifically refer to sexually violating a woman. The “Rape of Persephone” is the story of how Persephone was snatched away from her mother by Hades. The Rape of the Sabines is the story of how the Sabine women were snatched away from their families by the men of early Rome.
In the original myth of Persephone and Hades (the Homeric hymn, that is, which is the earliest source we have), there’s a lot of parallels drawn between marriage and death, specifically in that both steal a child away from the unwilling mother. (In ancient Greece, when a girl married, she moved to her husband’s house, and went from seeing her mother 24/7 to seeing her much less frequently, if at all, depending on how far away the husband lived and how strict he was). The story is actually about Demeter, not Persephone, in that it’s about how Demeter initially resisted her daughter’s death/marriage, to the point of defying Zeus and upsetting the natural world, but eventually accepted that this was the way it was going to be.
It’s nuanced, and we can’t just interpret it with a modern lens. There are pitfalls to calling it a horrific rape story, and also pitfalls to calling it an empowering feminist story. Neither are true, because both are interpreting the story as if it was composed by a modern person, for a modern audience, in a modern culture.
It is a story about how a mother must accept that her child will be taken from her without her consent, since to the Greeks, the only consent that legally mattered in a marriage was that of the bride’s father. (but the bride was usually consenting, too- think about it, if you’re trying to marry your daughter off, and persuading potential suitors that she’s a good match, it’s a hell of a lot easier to find a guy that she’s not actively resisting. Her consent might not matter legally, but fathers would strive to find a compatible match because it was easier if everyone involved was happy with the marriage). It is a story about a mother learning that it is right that she go along with this way of things, and that attempting to resist this cultural institution of marriage is akin to trying to resist death itself. It is a story that completely ignores whether or not Persephone wanted to marry Hades, was happy in the Underworld, or any of that. It’s a story about a mother learning the proper role of a mother in the Greek world. It’s a story amplifies and exaggerates the realities of a mother whose daughter gets married, in the way that the Iliad amplifies and exaggerates the realities of war and heroic pride. (It’s not just without Demeter’s consent, it’s a COMPLETE SURPRISE KIDNAPPING, Persephone’s not just married, she’s DEAD!! Demeter isn’t just sad, she’s so despondent she LITERALLY KILLS ALL PLANT LIFE). It’s a story that says, “Hey, mothers, your daughters will eventually leave you and get married, and you might be sad and miss her, but this is the way the world works, and this is what needs to happen for society to continue and the next generation to be born. Your pain and resentment is real, here is a powerful goddess feeling the same thing, but even more so. But she eventually accepted that her daughter had to grow up and move on, and so can you.”
It’s also the story of how a discontented woman can bring the world to screeching halt, and how the fundamentals of society (e.g. agriculture) cannot function without a woman’s willing work, and how those women must be kept happy in order to ensure that society functions. It is a story of how the Father of Gods and King of Men literally half-way undoes death itself just to satisfy a pissed-off mother, because an angry Demeter can bend even the Father of Gods to her will. It’s the story of a mother who fought death and marriage and half-way won. The story of Zeus submitting to Demeter’s will and going against his own word to Hades. It’s the story of women’s sacred role in facilitating the three fundamental transitions in every person’s life- birth, marriage, and death. It’s a story of how women understand and know death in a way men do not. It’s a story of how women have a power over death that men do not have, and that men are frightened of. It’s a story of how women held a central role in the continuation and propagation of society in Greek culture, and about what women’s participation in Greek society looked like.
it’s fascinating as hell and yes modern interpretations of persephone as the Badass Feminist Queen of the Dead are fun and empowering, but don’t project modern lenses onto the Greeks. They didn’t see Persephone as a victim, or as a badass all-powerful queen of the underworld, or as a object suitable only for sex. Their concept of Persephone and Demeter and Hades is difficult to define and probably has aspects of all of these interpretations, and we’ll never know exactly, but we can’t even begin to approach knowing unless we learn as much as possible about how Greeks viewed the world, what they valued as a culture, and what they thought everyone’s roles ought to be, and then view their stories through that lens.
