Demeter and Persephone: The Homeric Hymn and Its Rival Versions

The story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone is one of the most moving in Greek myth: a girl carried off to the underworld, a mother who searches the earth with torches, a famine that threatens gods and humans alike, and a compromise that brings the daughter back for part of every year.

The story is told at length in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, part of a collection of thirty-three hymns "ascribed to Homer." Its 1914 translator, Hugh G. Evelyn-White, judged the collection, on the whole, later than the Iliad and the Odyssey, and even later than the lost epics of the Cycle.

This guide walks through the hymn in Evelyn-White's translation, with line numbers from his edition, then compares the Roman poet Ovid's version (in Henry T. Riley's 1851 translation) and the Library of Apollodorus (Sir James George Frazer, 1921). They disagree on more than you might expect.

The abduction in the meadow

The hymn opens with Persephone gathering flowers with the daughters of Ocean: roses, crocuses, violets, irises, hyacinths. Then she sees a narcissus that Earth made to grow "at the will of Zeus," a flower so marvelous that "from its root grew a hundred blooms." As she reaches for it, "the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa," and Hades bursts out with his immortal horses and carries her away in his golden chariot (lines 4 to 32).

The hymn is blunt about responsibility. Persephone was "given to him by all-seeing Zeus," her own father. She cries out, but only Hecate, in her cave, and Helios, the Sun, hear her.

A mother's search

When Demeter hears the echo of her daughter's voice, she tears the covering from her hair and searches land and sea. For nine days, the hymn says, "queenly Deo wandered over the earth with flaming torches in her hands," refusing ambrosia and nectar and not even washing (lines 40 to 53). On the tenth dawn Hecate meets her, and the two go to Helios, who sees everything.

Helios tells her the truth: Zeus gave the girl to Hades "to be called his buxom wife." He even urges her to accept it, since Hades is her own brother and ruler of a third share of the world (lines 74 to 87). Demeter's response is grief "yet more terrible and savage," and she abandons Olympus for the towns of mortals.

Demeter at Eleusis

Disguised as an old woman, Demeter sits by the Maiden Well at Eleusis. The four daughters of King Celeus find her there, and she tells them a false story: her name is Doso, and pirates brought her from Crete. They bring her home to their mother, Metaneira, who hires her to nurse her late-born son, Demophoon.

Two small scenes here are worth noticing. Demeter sits silent and unsmiling until a servant named Iambe makes her laugh "with many a quip and jest." Then she refuses red wine and asks instead for a drink of meal and water mixed with mint (lines 184 to 211).

Demeter secretly tries to make the baby immortal, anointing him with ambrosia by day and hiding him "like a brand in the heart of the fire" by night. Metaneira spies on her and screams. Furious, the goddess drops the child, reveals herself in a blaze of light, and demands a temple and altar at Eleusis, promising to teach her rites (lines 231 to 274).

Famine, and the pomegranate seed

Sitting in her new temple, Demeter causes "a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind": the seed will not sprout, and the oxen plow in vain. She would have destroyed the human race, the hymn says, and robbed the gods of their sacrifices, if Zeus had not acted (lines 301 to 320). Iris and then every god in turn try to persuade her, offering gifts. She refuses to return to Olympus or let anything grow until she sees her daughter.

Zeus sends Hermes to fetch Persephone. Hades agrees, but "secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat," so that she could not stay with her mother for good (lines 370 to 383).

The reunion is joyful until Demeter asks whether her daughter ate anything below. If she did, she must spend "a third part of the seasons every year" underground. Persephone's own account adds a striking detail. The narrator says Hades gave her the seed secretly; Persephone says he "forced me to taste against my will" (lines 405 to 433).

Zeus then confirms the arrangement through Rhea: one third of the year with Hades, two thirds with her mother and the gods. Demeter makes the fields bloom again, and the hymn links Persephone's return to "when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring."

The Mysteries

Before returning to Olympus, Demeter teaches her rites to the leaders of Eleusis, among them Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus and Celeus. These were "awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter." The hymn promises the initiated a better lot after death: "Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries" (lines 470 to 482).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's essay on Greek religion confirms the context: in mystery cults "such as the one at Eleusis near Athens, only initiates could participate." That secrecy fits the hymn's refusal to describe the rites themselves.

Where the other versions differ

Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 5) retells the myth with Roman names, Ceres for Demeter, Proserpina or Proserpine for Persephone and Pluto for Hades, and changes a great deal:

• The setting moves to Sicily, to a lake near Henna, and in Riley's summary Venus has Cupid shoot Pluto with an arrow to make him fall in love.
• The story is the song of the Muse Calliope, sung in answer to the Pierides and repeated by another Muse to Minerva.
• Persephone plucks a pomegranate in the underworld's garden herself and eats "seven grains." A witness named Ascalaphus reports it, and she turns him into an owl.
• Jupiter "divides the rolling year equally": half with her mother, half with her husband.

Apollodorus agrees with the hymn on the split. Persephone "was compelled to remain a third of every year with Pluto and the rest of the time with the gods." But in his version Demeter punishes Ascalaphus by laying a heavy rock on him in Hades. In a note to Ovid's text, Riley also points out that Ovid's Fasti has the Sun reveal the abduction, as the hymn does, while the Metamorphoses gives that role to the nymph Arethusa.

Key takeaways

• The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the whole story in Greek verse, and it says plainly that Zeus gave Persephone to Hades.
• Demeter's stay at Eleusis, with Iambe's jokes, the mint drink and the baby in the fire, explains the founding of her temple and rites there.
• In the hymn Persephone eats one seed and spends a third of the year below; Ovid has seven grains and half the year.
• Ovid sets the story in Sicily and gives it a Muse as narrator, Calliope.
• The Eleusinian Mysteries were secret, so the hymn points toward them without revealing them.

Sources

• Hugh G. Evelyn-White (trans.), Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica (1914), Project Gutenberg
• Henry T. Riley (trans.), The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I-VII (1851), Project Gutenberg
• Sir James George Frazer (trans.), Apollodorus, The Library 1.5.3 (1921), Perseus Digital Library
• Colette Hemingway and Seán Hemingway, Greek Gods and Religious Practices (October 2003), The Metropolitan Museum of Art