Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds willingly? Why?
I talk a lot about why she would eat the seeds willingly here and here. And there’s another bit I wrote about female agency in the Bronze Age here.
But the long and short of those three wordy essays on that idea is this: Persephone was a goddess and one who was deeply feared and respected by the Greeks. Before she became the Iron Queen of the Underworld, she presided over vegetation and fertility as the embodiment of spring (Karpophoros) and would have known what those seeds meant.
And by explicating the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, her first appearance in written record, we see that she changed Hades himself. The story begins with him snatching her unwillingly and carrying her away to the Underworld in the way a bride would traditionally be taken to her new husband’s home. But by the time Persephone leaves, he has this to say:
“Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.”
It is right after this scene that he slips her the pomegranate seeds. In this scene Hermes has come to bring Persephone back to grieving Demeter, and Hades doesn’t just say “here, Hermes I’ll return Zeus his property” but addresses and cajoles Persephone herself and offers her equal rulership over his domain something that would have been un-fucking-heard-of in a society where women were seen as chattel, as a way to simply produce sons.
But why did she eat the seeds? We know she didn’t do it because she was hungry. It says in the Illiad that gods do not require bread or wine as mankind does.
When she eats the seeds she is called “wise Persephone”, casting away doubt that it was done by mistake.
And she eats the seeds ONLY after Hades offers her timai, honor, and a chance to be something more than what she was in the world above: kore, a name that simply means ‘maiden’ or ‘girl’. If she hadn’t eaten the seeds, it would have compelled her to “remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter”, and she would have been a maiden without timai once more instead of the ruler over the dead that the Greeks feared and respected utterly.
Persephone herself says later that Zeus had given her to Hades with métis (wisdom), showing that she too was transformed by her time with Hades, and believed him to be a fitting husband. A good match for her. The alliteration of ‘dark-haired Hades and noble Persephone’ in how Hermes addressed them when he found them together would have also tipped off the ancient audience listening to the hymn that they were well matched.
Because she was a goddess of vegetation who would know the consequences of eating the food of the Underworld, because she held a place of such importance in the pantheon, and because she only did it after Hades promised her equal rule as Queen, I believe that Persephone ate the seeds conscientiously and willingly.
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