Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and the queen of the underworld. She was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld, enraging her mother who caused the crops to wither and the land to be barren. Zeus intervened and tried to bring Persephone to the world of the living; However, Persephone ate the seeds of a pomegranate that Hades had given her, forcing her on for a third of the year. Thus, it was decided that Persephone spend four months in the underworld and eight months on earth with her mother. The period in the underworld corresponded to the winter season, during which Demeter would make the soils barren due to her pain, while her return marked the beginning of spring.
They also gave him a series of epithets; She was often called Kore (the maiden) and Kore Soteira (the saving maiden); Hagne (the pure one); Aristi Cthonia (the best chthonic); And Despoina (the owner of the house).
She was the queen goddess of the underworld, wife of the god Haides (Hades). She was also the goddess of spring growth, who was worshiped alongside her mother Demeter in the Eleusinian mysteries. This agricultural-based cult promised its initiates the passage to a blessed afterlife.
Persephone was titled Kore (Core) (The Maiden) as the goddess of spring bounty. In other myths, Persephone appears exclusively as the queen of the underworld, receiving Heracles and Orpheus at her court.
Persephone was generally depicted as a young goddess holding sheafs of bead and a flaming torch. Sometimes she was shown in the company of her mother Demeter, and the hero Triptolemos, the master of agriculture. Other times she appears enthroned alongside Haides.
In works of art Persephone is seen very frequently: she bears the grave and severe character of an infernal Juno, or appears as a mystical divinity with a scepter and a small box, but she was represented for the most part in the act of being carried by Pluto.
The story that Persephone spent four months a year in the underworld was undoubtedly the explanation for the barren appearance of the Greek fields in midsummer (after the harvest), before their rebirth in the autumn rains, when they are plowed and sown.
