Death and Return in the Myth of Persephone by Kathie Carlson

The most complete and well–known source of the myth of Demeter and Persephone available to us comes from the first Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed around 650 B.C.E. While preserving and elaborating the most coherent form of the myth, the author of the Homeric Hymn screened out many of its more archaic and most interesting elements. These are to be found in variants of the myth, which survive only in fragmentary form. In the following rendering of the mythic tale, I have used the Homeric Hymn as a baseline (drawing from the translations of Charles Boer1 and Paul Friedrich2 in particular); the relevant variants appear in my commentary on each part of the Homeric story.

Saluting Demeter as the 'awesome' goddess and describing her daughter as the Kore whom Zeus "gave away to be seized by violence" by Hades, the Homeric author begins his tale: Kore was playing in a field one day, far from her mother, picking flowers with other maiden goddesses. Suddenly she came upon a flower never seen before—the narcissus— which Earth (the goddess Gaia) had grown as a favor to Hades and Zeus. The young woman was amazed and reached for the hundred–headed blossom in delight but as she did, the earth opened wide and up from its chasm leapt the Lord of the Underworld. He snatched the girl and carried her off in his chariot. More>>>