Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Persephone and the Chariot

The world over which Zeus ruled as sovereign lord of heaven was a bountiful mother to mankind. Men, women and children helped themselves to the fruit of the trees, the grains of the grasses, the fish of the waters and the beasts of the fields without effort or much labour. Demeter, goddess of fertility and the harvest, blessed the natural world. If there was hunger or deprivation, it came about only as a result of human cruelty and the workings of those terrible creatures let loose from Pandora’s jar, not as a result of divine neglect. All this was to change, however. Hades had a part in it and – who knows? – perhaps his plan all along was to hasten and increase death in the world and so increase the population of his kingdom. Intricate are the workings of Moros.

Demeter had a daughter, Persephone, by her brother Zeus. So beautiful and pure and lovely was she that the gods took to calling her KORE, or CORA, which means simply ‘the maiden’. The Romans called her PROSERPINA. All the gods, especially the unattached Apollo and Hermes, fell dizzily in love with her and even offered marriage. But the protective (some might say overprotective) Demeter hid her away in the remote countryside, far from the hungry eyes of gods and immortals, honourable and dishonourable alike, intending for her to remain – like Hestia, Athena and Artemis – for ever virgin and unattached. There was one powerful god, however, who had laid his covetous eyes upon the girl and had no intention of respecting Demeter’s wishes.

There was nothing the sweet and artless Persephone liked to do more than commune with nature. Very much her mother’s daughter, flowers and pretty growing things were her greatest source of joy. One golden afternoon, a little separated from the companions appointed by her mother to protect her, Persephone was chasing butterflies as they flitted from blossom to blossom in a sun-dappled, flowery meadow. Suddenly she heard a deep rending and roaring sound. It was like thunder yet seemed to be coming, not from the sky above, but from the ground beneath her feet. She looked about her in fear and bewilderment. The earth was shaking and the hillside in front of her split apart. From out of the opening there thundered a great chariot. Before the terrified girl had a chance to turn and run, the driver had scooped her up, swung the chariot round and driven it back through the cleft in the hillside. By the time Persephone’s alarmed companions had reached the place, the opening had sealed itself up, leaving no sign that it had ever been there.

Persephone’s disappearance was as inexplicable as it was sudden and complete. One minute she had been happily gambolling through the meadow, the next she had vanished from sight, leaving not a trace behind.

Demeter’s despair can hardly be described. We have all lost something precious to us – animal, vegetable or mineral – and passed through the agonizing stages of grief, fright and anger that sudden dispossession can cause. When the loss is so personal, unforeseen, absolute and impossible to understand, those feelings are amplified to the most terrible degree. Although, as the days went by it became more and more difficult to believe that Persephone would ever be seen again, Demeter vowed that she would find her daughter if it took the eternity of her immortal span.

Demeter called upon her Titaness friend HECATE for aid. Hecate was a goddess of potions, keys, ghosts, poisons and all manner of witchcraft and enchantments.fn1 She was the possessor of two torches that could illuminate all the corners of the earth. She and Demeter searched those corners, once, twice, a thousand times. They shone light into every cavern and dark place they could find. They scoured the world with no success.

Months passed. All this time Demeter neglected her responsibilities. The corn, the harvests, the ripening of fruit and the sowing of crops – all were abandoned, and in the earth nothing germinated. No seeds sprouted, no buds opened, no shoots grew and the world began to desertify.

The gods were safe on Olympus, but the cries of the famished and despairing people on earth reached the ears of Zeus. Only when he and the other gods, one night, were making much of the mystery of Persephone’s disappearance did the sun Titan Helios speak up.fn2

‘Persephone? Oh, I saw what happened to her. I see everything.’

‘You saw? Then why didn’t you say something?’ demanded Zeus. ‘Demeter has been dementedly wandering the earth looking for her, frantic with worry and the world is turning into a desert. Why the hell didn’t you speak up?’

‘No one asked me! No one ever asks me anything. But I know a lot. The eye of the sun sees all,’ said Helios, repeating a line that Apollo had often used during his days in charge of the sun-chariot.

‘What happened to her?’

‘The earth opened and who should come out in his chariot and seize her but … Hades!’

‘Hades!’ chorused the gods.

The Pomegranate Seeds

Zeus immediately went down to the underworld to fetch Persephone back. But the King of the Underworld was in no mood to take orders from the King of the Overworld.

‘She stays. She is my queen.’

‘You dare to defy me?’

‘You are my younger brother,’ said Hades. ‘My youngest brother in fact. You have always had everything you’ve ever wanted. I demand the right to keep the girl I love. You cannot deny me.’

‘Oh, can’t I?’ said Zeus. ‘The world is in famine. The cries of starving mortals keep us awake. Refuse to return Persephone and you will soon discover the force and reach of my will. Hermes will bring no more spirits of the dead to you. Not one single soul shall ever be sent here. All will be despatched to a new paradise, or perhaps never even die. Hades will become an empty realm drained of all power, influence or majesty. Your name will become a laughing stock.’

The brothers glared at each other. Hades was the first to blink.

‘Damn you,’ he growled. ‘Give me one more day with her and then send Hermes to fetch her.’

Zeus travelled back up to Olympus well pleased.

The next day Hades knocked on the door of Persephone’s chamber. You might be surprised that he knocked, but the fact is, in her dignified and assured presence, even such a power as Hades found himself uncertain and shy. He loved her with all his heart, and although he had lost the battle of wills with Zeus he was sure that he could not let her go. Besides, he detected in her something … something that gave him hope. A small flicker of returned love?

‘My dear,’ he said with a gentleness that would have astonished anyone who knew him. ‘Zeus has prevailed upon me to send you back into the world of light.’

Persephone raised her pale face and gazed steadily at him.

Hades gazed earnestly back. ‘I hope you do not think ill of me?’

She did not reply, but Hades thought he could detect a little colour flushing her cheeks and throat.

‘Share some pomegranate seeds with me to show there is no ill-feeling?’

Listlessly Persephone took six seeds from his outstretched hand and sucked slowly at their sharp sweetness.

When Hermes arrived the trickster god found that he and Zeus had themselves been tricked.

‘Persephone has eaten fruit from my kingdom,’ said Hades. ‘It is ordained that all who have tasted the food of hell must return. She has tasted six pomegranate seeds so she must come back to me for six months of every year.’

Hermes bowed. He knew that this was so. Taking Persephone by the hand he led her up out of the underworld. Demeter was so overjoyed to see her daughter that the world immediately began to spring into bloom. It was a joy that was to last for half the length of the year, for six months later, in accordance with ineluctable divine law, Persephone was forced to return to the underworld. Demeter’s distress at this parting caused the trees to shed their leaves and a dead time to creep over the world. Another six months passed, Persephone emerged from Hades’ domain and the cycle of birth, renewal and growth began again. In this way the seasons came about, the autumn and winter of Demeter’s grieving for the absence of her daughter and the spring and summer of her jubilation at Persephone’s return.

As for Persephone herself … well, it seems that she grew to love her time below as much as her time above. For six months she was no prisoner in Hades but the contented Queen of the Underworld, a loving consort who held imperious sway over the dominion of death with her husband. For the other six months she reverted to the laughing Kore of fertility, flowers, fruit and frolic.

The world had found a new rhythm.

Hermaphroditus and Silenus

As the men and women of the Silver Age became accustomed to the striving and toiling and suffering that seemed now to be their common lot, so the gods continued to breed. Hermes, who had grown swiftly into handsome but eternally youthful manhood, fathered the goat-footed nature god PAN by the nymph DRYOPE.fn3 Behind the back of Hephaestus and Ares he also coupled with Aphrodite, a union blessed by the birth of a son of quite transcendent loveliness named – in honour of each parent – HERMAPHRODITUS.

This beautiful boy grew up in the shadow of Mount Ida, cared for by naiads.fn4 When he reached the age of fifteen he left them to wander the world. Travelling in Asia Minor he met one bright afternoon a naiad called SALMACIS who was splashing in the clear waters of a spring near Halicarnassus. Hermaphroditus, who was as shy as he was lovely, became greatly confused and unhappy when this forward creature, stunned by his beauty, tried to seduce him.

Unlike most of her kind – modest, hard-working nymphs who attended with diligence to the maintenance of the streams, pools and water-courses over which they had charge – Salmacis had a reputation for vanity and indolence. She would rather swim lazily around admiring her own limbs in the water than hunt or exercise with the other naiads. But her peace and self-esteem were shattered by the beauty of this Hermaphroditus, and she exerted herself mightily to win him. The more she tried – revolving naked in the water, winningly rubbing her breasts, blowing coy bubbles under the surface – the less comfortable the boy became, until he shouted at her to leave him alone. She departed in a sulky surge, shocked and humiliated by the new and unwelcome experience of rejection.

It was a fine day, though, and Hermaphroditus, hot and sweaty from the excitement of fighting off this tiresome sprite and thinking she was safely out of the way, stripped off his clothing and plunged into the cool waters of the spring to refresh himself.

Almost immediately Salmacis, who had swum back under the cover of the reeds, leapt on him like a salmon and clung fast to his naked body. Revolted he wiggled and wriggled and jiggled to be set free, while she cried up to the heavens, ‘O gods above, never let this youth and me part! Let us always be one!’

The gods heard her prayer and answered with the callous literalness that seemed ever to delight them. In an instant Salmacis and Hermaphroditus did indeed become one. The pair fused into a single body. One body, two sexes. No longer the naiad Salmacis and the youth Hermaphroditus, but now intersex, male and female coexisting in one form. Although the Romans were to regard this state of being as a disorder that threatened the strict militaristic norms of their society, the more open-minded Greeks prized, celebrated and even worshipped the hermaphrodite gender. Statuary and representations on pottery and temple friezes show us that what the Romans feared, the Greeks seemed to find admirable.fn5

In this new state Hermaphroditus joined the retinue of EROTES whose nature and purpose we will describe very soon.

By an unknown nymph, Hermesfn6 also fathered the snub-nosed, donkey-tailed lecher SILENUS, who grew up to become a bearded, pot-bellied, pucker-browed old drunk, a popular subject in paintings, sculptures and carved drinking vessels, and whom we shall also encounter before too long.

As the gods bred, so man bred. But the divine fire that was now as much a part of our nature as the gods meant that we shared with them the capacity not just for lust, copulation and reproduction, but the capacity for love.

Love, as the Greeks understood, is complicated.