Persephone Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

Is Persephone the Main Ruler of the Underworld in Greek Myth?

Most people who know about Greek myth think that Hades is the ruler of the underworld. This is not wrong per se; early Greek poems do describe Hades as “ruler of those beneath the earth.” But, for the ancient Greeks, Hades was surprisingly not very important. Instead, across ritual, mythic, literary, and artistic contexts, Persephone, the queen of the underworld, occupies a far more prominent and authoritative position than her husband. She is the one who sends up the shades of the dead to speak to Odysseus in Book 11 of the Odyssey, the one whom Greeks honored through rituals and holidays, the one who was central to the Eleusinian mysteries, and the one who Orphic initiates believed would intercede for them in the afterlife.

By contrast, Hades was never a very developed figure for the ancient Greeks. Early poems mostly use his name as a metonym for the underworld itself and say very little about him as a personal god. He had very little significance in Greek ritual, and the only early myth in which he appears as a real character with his own agency and desires is that of his abduction of Persephone. Hades is vastly more prominent in contemporary retellings and adaptations of Greek myth than he ever was in the actual ancient sources.

I originally started writing a blog post on this topic around 2021, but I never finished it. Recently, the discussion around the depiction of the underworld in Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, which I posted a review of last week, reminded me of it, so I decided to return to the topic. In this post, I will explore in depth the evidence for Persephone and Hades’s relative importance in early Greek religion and myth, as well as their possible origins.

Persephone Is in the Underworld During the Summer, Not the Winter

For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, winter will soon be upon us. The ancient Greek myth of the goddess Persephone, who spends one third of the year in the underworld and the remaining two thirds of the year with her mother Demeter, is a well-known etiological myth (i.e., a myth that explains how things came to be the way they are) for the changing of the seasons.

Most modern people who know the myth of Persephone think that the ancient Greeks believed that she was in the underworld during the winter and with Demeter for the rest of the year. Even many professional classicists think this. I, however, like some other scholars, am convinced that this is incorrect. The surviving ancient sources for the myth are unclear about which part of the year Persephone spends in the underworld and it makes far more sense given everything we know about the ancient Greek agricultural and religious calendars to conclude that the Greeks believed that she was in the underworld during the summer, not the winter.

Did Hades Abduct Persephone or Did She Go with Him Willingly?

In many sanitized modern adaptations of the story of Hades and Persephone, Persephone is portrayed as going with Hades to the Underworld willingly. This is the version of the story that is found in many books about Greek mythology intended for children and in the award-winning music Hadestown. This is not, however, how the story is portrayed in ancient Greek sources.

The ancient Greek and Roman accounts of Persephone universally agree that Hades abducted Persephone against her will and raped her. Both literary and artistic representations of the event unambiguously portray it as a forcible abduction. Ancient Greek and Roman poems give graphic descriptions of Persephone being brutally snatched and carried off, crying and screaming in desperation.

I don’t necessarily see the modern sanitization of the story of Hades and Persephone as a problem strictly speaking, but I do think that it is important to keep in mind that the versions of the story that were told in ancient times were much darker than the versions many people are telling today.