The Myth of Persephone

Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter.

Persephone is a Goddess of Spring and helps Demeter tend plants.

Hades, Lord of the Underworld, was smitten with Persephone and asked Zeus for her hand. Zeus didn’t consent because he feared Demeter’s temper. Hades whisks Persephone away to the Underworld anyway and makes her Queen of the Underworld. 

But Demeter was distraught that her daughter left and stopped tending the plants and wandered the earth looking for her. People and animals began to starve. 

Demeter insisted Persephone return to her.

Under pressure from Demeter, Zeus went to talk to Hades and begged that Persephone leave the underworld and help Demeter again (before everyone on earth starved to death.) 

When Hades protested, his brother Zeus, God of the Sky exercised his power, and declared that Persephone’s marriage would be void as long as she ate nothing from the Underworld’s garden.

Hades was sad to see Persephone go and wooed her with a pomegranate. She ate a pomegranate from the garden in the underworld and that act consummated her marriage to Hades.

Her return from the underworld marks the beginning of Spring.

Because Persephone tastes the pomegranate she must return to the underworld and her husband at the end of harvest and Winter begins.