That year was most dreadful and cruel for mankind over all the earth. Nothing grew; no seed sprang up; in vain the oxen drew the plowshare through the furrows. It seemed the whole race of men would die of famine. At last Zeus saw that he must take the matter in hand. He sent the gods to Demeter, one after another, to try to turn her from her anger, but she listened to none of them. Never would she let the earth bear fruit until she had seen her daughter. Then Zeus realized that his brother must give way. He told Hermes to go down to the underworld and to bid the lord of it let his bride go back to Demeter. Hermes found the two sitting side by side, Persephone shrinking away, reluctant because she longed for her mother. At Hermes ‘words she sprang up joyfully, eager to go. Her husband knew that he must obey the word of Zeus and send her up to earth away him, but he prayed her as left him to have kind thoughts of him and not be so sorrowful that she was the wife of one who was great among the Immortals. And he made her eat a pomegranate seed, knowing in his heart that if she did so she must return to him. He got ready his golden car and Hermes took the reins and drove the black horses straight to the temple where Demeter was. She ran out to meet her daughter as swiftly as a Maenad runs down the mountainside. Persephone sprang into her arms and was held fast there. All day they talked of what had happened to them both, and Demeter grieved when she heard of the pomegranate seed, fearing that she could not keep her daughter with her. Then Zeus sent another messenger to her, a great personage, none other than his revered mother Rhea, the oldest of the gods. Swiftly she hastened down from the heights of Olympus to the barren, leafless earth, and standing a the door of the temple she spoke to Demeter. Come, my daughter, for Zeus, far-seeing, loud-thundering, bid you. Com once again to the halls of the gods where you shall have honor, Where you will have your desire, your daughter, to comfort your sorrow As each year is accomplished and bitter winter is ended. For a third part only the kingdom of darkness shall hold her. For the rest you will keep her, you and the happy Immortals. Peace now. Give men which comes alone from your giving.
Demeter did not refuse, poor comfort though it was that she must lose Persephone for four months every year and see her young loveliness go down to the world of the dead. But she was kid; the “Good Goddess,” men always called her. She made the fields once more rich with abundant fruit and the whole world bright with flowers and green leaves. Also she went to the princes of Eleusis who had built her temple she chose one, Triptolemus, to be her ambassador to men, instructing them how to sow the corn. She taught him and Celeus and the other her sacred rites, “mysteries which no one may utter, for deep awe checks the tongue. Blessed is he who seen them; his lot will be good in the world to com.”
Queen of fragrant Eleusis Giver of earth’s good gifts, Give me your grace, 0 Demeter, You, too, Persephone, fairest, Malden all lovely, I offer Song for your favor. In. the stories of both goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, the Idea of sorrow was foremost. Demeter, goddess of the harvest wealth, was still more the divine sorrowing mother who saw her daughter die each year. Persephone was the radiant maiden of the spring and the summertime, whose light step upon the dry, brown hillside was enough to make it fresh and blooming, as Sappho writes,
I heard the footfall of the flower spring… -Persephone’s footfall. But all the while Persephone knew how brief that beauty was; fruits, flowers, leaves all the fair growth of earth, must end with the coming of the cold and pass like herself into the power of death. After the lord of the dark world below carried her away she was never again the gay young creature who had played in the flowery meadow without a thought