Persephone active role in the Hymn to Demeter
I want to express my criticism of some scholars’ analysis regarding the Hymn to Demeter. I’ve read different thesis that state that “By giving his daughter Persephone to Hades, Zeus intends to create a bridge and alliance between the upper and the hitherto inaccessible lower world” (Strauss Clay, The Politics of Olympus, 213).
I think there is a mistake in giving so much credit to Zeus, and futhermore, I think the Hymn we have -as other scholars also state- is combining separate stories in attempt to make an “olympization” of the Persephone-Demeter story by trying to introduce Zeus as the King of gods, the god at the top of the hierarchy. When we read the Hymn, despite it says things happen “for the will/plan of Zeus” we can clearly see that Zeus is not an authoritarian figure, his plans get frustrated, Demeter shows to be more powerful than he is, and so on. But the most important, if we claim that it is Zeus’ plan to make a connection between the upper world and the underworld, this plain ONLY succeeds because of Persephone and Hades actions, never his.
Let’s take again, the statement of “Zeus is trying to effect a more permanent connection between the various spatial regions that make up the universe” (Douglas Al-Maini, The Political Cosmology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 98). This bridge and communication between worlds continues to be unexistent after Hades abducts Persephone until the very end of the Hymn (line 445) Demeter wanders through the world unable to reach her daughter, this means: Hades remains an inaccessible realm. This reality of isolation is such, that at line 335, “Zeus sends Hermes, the only god with the ability to traverse the barrier between the upper and lower worlds, to the Lord of the Dead” (Strauss Clay, 249).
Can you follow my idea until this moment? What I’m trying to say, is that we’ve been giving too much credit to Zeus and making Persephone a pasive character, when actually she and Hades are the ones who create the bridge between the worlds! Why? Because when Hades gives his speech (emphasis on lines 363-366) he is stating that Persephone’s honors entail her role as mediator between the worlds, and Persephone accepts such role by eating the pomegranate seeds.
Lines 363 to 366: I shall be no unfitting husband for you among immortals, since I am brother to father Zeus. And while you are there*, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the highest honor among the deathless gods”.
*Some translations make the lines as “while you are here”, but according to Richardson (1974) the word is “thither” (ἔνθα - entha) meaning that “Persephone will remain Hades’ wife amongst the gods, and she will rule in the upper world over all that lives and moves and will hold her honours ‘amongst the gods”.
It’s Hades action of giving the pomegranate to Persephone -and her acceptance of it- the one that guarantees that Persephone will be able to move between the spheres of the world and fulfill her mediator role. Zeus has no part on this.
Lines 372-374: (Hades) gave her a pomegranate seed to eat, honey-sweet, by stealth, taking care himself that she might not remain always again with revered dark-robed Demeter.
Persephone accepts the pomegranate, let’s remember that twice she is called “wise” by epithets that refer to her intelligence:
Line 359: And he (Hades) straightway urged wise* Persephone, saying:
“wise” = δαΐφρονι, daïphroni an epithet used in Homeric narrative to refer to male figures (in the Hymn in line 96 and 233 to refer to Celeus).
Line 370: When he said this, strong-minded* Persephone was filled with joy
Strong-minded = περίφρων, periphrôn also wise.
Hades and Persephone are aware of the consequence of the pomegranate (the division of the time Persephone will have to spend on each world) and Demeter and Zeus have to agree to this (line 445 and line 463). As Strauss Clay says “It is evident that Demeter immediately knows the consequences of her daughter’s eating in Hades. As soon as she recognizes them, the goddess offers no further resistance”. After this Strauss Clay asks could it be that Demeter acquiesces to the arrandement because she comprehends and accepts its full significance? and the answer is yes. Demeter and Zeus accept this new configuration of the world where Hades and Olympus are communicated and no longer isolated. (Demeter) clearly does accept the consequences of the swallowing of the pomegranate seed and the irreversibility both of Persephone’s bond with Hades and of a cyclic life/death, fertility/infertility pattern with results from that bond (Rubin and Deal, 1980, Some functions of the Demophon Episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,18).
Although it is not the purpose here to discuss the idea of Persephone’s unwillingless, I will repeat that Persephone eating unwillingly is not a possibility since it would mean that the epithets to refer to Persephone’s intelligence are a mere ornament in the Hymn and that idea is really absurd. Most of scholars agree that Persephone lies with her verbose answer since according to the narrator Hades never used force. Also, the idea of forced eating = “sexual rape” is not a possibility either. The few people who try to defend this idea mostly do it because to them the Hymn is a reflection of women’s initation by rape (like Bruce Lincoln) making connection as “Persephone the flower girl” gets “deflorated”, and others arguments that are not accurate. As I’ve stated before, the Hymn does not use a rape-narrative. In line 413 when Persephone says Hades unwillingly forced her to eat she uses the word “βίῃ” that is not the word used for rape-narrative in the rest of the literature, and in the Hymn that is the word Demeter uses to tell how (she) Doso was abducted by pirates in line 124. The Hymn clearly show us that both mother and daughter are good at making up stories.
So, in conclusion, I strongly believe that Persephone and Hades together are the ones who, by their union and marriage, take the decision to create a bridge and alliance between Olympus and the Underworld. This, obviously meaning, that Persephone has an active role in her story. And, to finish this writing, I’d like to quote Susan Deacy’s words when she says: (…) placing my study under the “aegis” of the feminist third wave. I shall pursue one of the goals of this “wave”, that of finding opportunities for female agency in unexpected contexts (From “lowery tales” to “heroic rapes”: virginal subjectivity in the mythological meadow, 2013, 397).