Homeric Hymns

Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, picks flowers by the sea and becomes entranced by a particularly beautiful flower. As Persephone goes to pick the flower, the earth opens, and Hades, god of the Underworld, emerges in a gold chariot. He snatches Persephone and takes her to the Underworld to be his wife.

Demeter, goddess of fertility, hears her daughter’s cries and searches the earth for Persephone. Soon Hecate, goddess of witchcraft, who also overheard Persephone’s cries, takes Demeter to the sun god Helios; he is watchman of gods and mortals, and he also saw what happened. He tells Demeter her daughter’s fate: Zeus has given Persephone to Hades in marriage. Angry with Zeus, Demeter leaves Olympus and lives among humankind. She takes refuge by the “Maiden’s Well” and looks “quite old, and long cut off from childbirth” (6). Girls who have come to gather water from the well notice Demeter, unaware that she is a goddess. Demeter lies to them, saying she was captured by pirates and forcefully taken to this land, and she asks the girls if there is a family in need of a nurse. Callidice, one of the girls, answers that her own mother has just given birth to a boy.