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.