“Persephone is also called kallipais, producer of beautiful children, at Euripides Orestes 964, although it is not clear what specific implications this epithet has for herself. Orphic fragments 197 and 360 Kern and Orphic Hymn 70 have her produce with Hades the chthonic Eumenides. Elsewhere she mates with Zeus to produce the chthonic nymph Melinoë (Orphic Hymn 71), and Tritopatreus, Eubouleus, and Dionysos¹ (Cicero, De natura deorum 3.53). In Aeschylus fragment 228 Nauck2, Hades is the father of Zagreus (the mother is unnamed). These obscure and probably later traditions are made more difficult to interpret, because Zeus is sometimes understood as having an incarnation in the world below closely identified with the lord of the dead himself. The absence of this theme could of course be due to its role in the most secret parts of the Mysteries. In Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae, Pluto wishes to marry because he is childless; but the poem is unfinished and thus leaves the question of offspring open.”
- Foley, Helene P. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton Princeton University Press, 1994.
