CW// Rape, violence, abuse
This isn’t very popular but I’ve already gotten a lot of asks/tags/comments about how “different and interesting” my take on Persephone and Hades is or how my adaptation is a neat approach or wrong or whatever.
I know this is long winded, but knowing the truth of this is very important to me.
In media the myth around Persephone and Hades is incredibly romanticized. The actual myth is called “The Rape of Persephone”. There was no love, no consent, no nothing. Hades asked Zeus if he could have Persephone because he was enamored with her. He enchanted away her strength with a flower and dragged her to the Underworld. He silenced her. Tricked her mother into straying or not paying attention, etc. Her friend Cyane (a nymph- who are so weak that some don’t even have enough power to ensure immortality) was so terrified for Persephone she tried to fight Hades, and when she lost she was so torn that she cried so much she turned into a puddle (or hades turned her to water it depends on the translation). Persephone called out to Zeus, to her mother, to a hundred other people and no one helped her. She was terrified.
In modern media The Rape of Persephone is bent and broken. Her mother Demeter is so often the villain or a bad person in book/comic interpretations, even though she just wanted to save her child who had been kidnapped and forced into a relationship she had no say in.
I know Percy Jackson or Lore Olympus or whateverill informed, cherry picked interpretation of Greek mythology you find (especially on this site, where Hades is portrayed as this soft boy at the mercy of his bullying brothers) often leads you to thinking that women were just as or more powerful than men in these legends- but that’s not how it was.
The brutalization and dehumanization of women is a fundamental aspect of so many Greek myths. It was (and still is) so hard, exhausting, and terrifying to be a woman. Nymphs (which means wife) cry themselves into trees and stones over being ignored by men or violated. The Goddess witch Circe is overpowered and left groveling at the feet of a mortal man. Demeter, who lost her daughter to a rapist, is constantly made villainous for wanting her back. Women are regularly beaten, raped, killed, and debased. The Greek pantheon’s patriarch himself is cruel and foul.
I wasn’t trying to make a feminist horror story out of the true love between Hades and Persephone, because it wasn’t true love in the first place. I was trying to depict the myth as what it really is.
“…[Hades] with his immortal horses sprang out upon her–the Son of Kronos (Cronus), Polynomos (He Who has Many Names).
He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father [Zeus], the Son of Kronos, who is most high and excellent. But no one, either of the deathless gods or mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tender-hearted Hekate (Hecate), bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaios (Persaeus), heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios (the Sun), Hyperion’s bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Kronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he [Haides], that Son of Kronos, Polynomos (Of Many Names), Polysemantor (Ruler of Many) and Polydegmon (Host of Many), was bearing her away by leave of Zeus on his immortal chariot–his brother’s child and all unwilling.
And so long as she, the goddess, yet beheld earth and starry heaven and the strong-flowing sea where fishes shoal, and the rays of the sun, and still hoped to see her dear mother and the tribes of the eternal gods, so long hope clamed her great heart for all her trouble.”
(Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th or 6th B.C.))
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