PERSEPHONE’S MYTH (part 1)
MISCONCEPTION 1: Before marrying Hades, Persephone was a random flower nymph/goddess with no importance at all.
I’ve read this kind of statement a lot here in Tumblr (even by Persephone fans or worshipers). Why is this wrong? What does the Homeric Hymn to Demeter tell us about her? This post is meant to clarify and enlighten the myth.
LINES 2, 21, 31 and others: First, let’s remember that Persephone is a goddess by birth. She is daughter of Zeus (god and king of all other gods) and Demeter (a highly imporant goddess!!), therefore she is part of the immortal race. She is sister to Athena, Apollo, Artemis and many other “important gods”.
LINE 08: Persephone is named “Kore” which means “maiden” or “girl”. In Ancient Greece, women’s life was divided into childhood/maidenhood and adulthood. The transition to adulthood is set by marriage. Married women are no longer girls, no longer “maidens”. That is why, Athena and Artemis who are virgin goddes are also “maidens”.
The “kore archetype” can be linked to vulnerability, not to stupidity. As authors and scholars like C. G. Jung state, the status of maidenhood is related to vulnerability (by lack of experience or physical strenght, etc.). In the Hymn we see that Persephone is a girl playing, who has no defense against her seizing. Artemis was a hunting goddess and yet she was also vulnerable to have her intimacy broken by Aktaion, Athena who was goddess of war and logic also suffers harrassment by Hephaistos. The huge difference between the 3 sisters, is that 1) Persephone has no defined honor/power yet unlike Artemis and Athena who are already linked to hunting/battle activities whent they find themselves in trouble, 2) in Persephone’s case, is Zeus, the ruler of gods and her own father, the one who allows the marriage by abduction. So in this context, Persephone as maiden goddess, is helpless and vulnerable. In the myths, Persephone is not portrayed as a goddess who is helpless because “she is stupid” and neither her status of young girl is linked to stupidity, as some Tumblr users like to portray.
LINES 5-7, 417-427: Flower gathering or “anthologia” was a deserving activity, one that girls did with joy and pride. The flower gathering was NOT a silly thing done by “stupid girls”. I’ve read this a lot in Tumblr and always in a very derogative way. Some people speak of Kore (Persephone) as if she was uninmportant and stupid because she was related to flowers, and only after marrying Hades she “became important”. This is not only inaccurate and wrong, but also highly anti-feminist. In lines 417-427 Persephone names her flower gathering companions, did you see who are with her? Athena and Artemis, goddesses of battles and hunting, “important goddesses”. Flower gathering was a good thing, done by maiden goddesses. And it was also done by Ancient Greek girls, with joy. As you should remember, in Ancient Times, flowers were highly important for clothing dying, medicine, food, garlands and ritual activities. So mocking and reducing flowers and the girls who gather them into a silly thing is something not helpful and harmful, and as I said before, really anti-feminist.
LINES 84, 325, 268, 360-369 and others: the Homeric Hymn to Demeter tell us many things, is a complex hymn, but one of the important subjects is the attribution of honors or timê/ timên. This concept of honor is related to the gods prerrogatives, rights or their magistracies. In order to sooth Demeter, Zeus (sending all the other gods) offers her to choose from any honor/attribution she wants. From the narrative of the Hymn we see that Persephone is portrayed as Demeter’s daughter but she does not seem to have any particular honor, not a special attribution from her own that distinguishes her from other goddeses. We can analyze this in many ways (from psychological perspectives like psychoanalysis, and so on) but what we learn and is clear from the Hymn, is that by becoming Queen of Hades (Underworld), Persephone gains new honors -again, we are not told if she had any previous honors- and as other important goddesses (as Styx or Hecate) these powers are not only limited to one realm (the Hades where she rules) but many. Persephone has honors in Hades, on Earth and also in Olympus.
The fact that we aren’t told of Persephone’s previous honors, does not necessarily mean that she didn’t have them. It would be a pretty weird thing that a daughter of Zeus had no honor or attribution at all. Persephone is portrayed as a girl, but she is still a goddess, she is not unimportant. In other myths, we have infant (or just born) gods as Artemis, Apollo or Hermes already doing great things. We are told that a “baby” Hermes invents the lyre and steals Apollo’s cattle, and later Zeus confirms the divine privileges/honors of Hermes. So, I think that we are free to speculate on Persephone/Kore’s privileges prior the abduction.
YOU CAN READ THE HOMERIC HYMN TO DEMETER ONLINE:
Early women masters: very useful since it has complementary texts on the left side of the screen, and notes on greek translations.
Translation by Gregory Nagy
Next post will focus on the abduction. Feel free to make questions.
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