Persephone

Persephone, the Roman Proserpina, is the daughter of Demeter and the queen of the underworld. Gathering flowers in a meadow, she was seized by Hades and carried below; her mother's grief darkened the earth until a compact was struck — Persephone would spend part of the year above with Demeter and part below as queen of the dead. In her rising and descending the Greeks read the death and rebirth of the grain, and of the year itself.

Because her myth joins the corn-seed buried and sprung again to the journey of the soul, Persephone stands at the heart of the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, the goddess whose story promises that descent is not the end. For the Platonists her abduction and return became a cipher for the soul's fall into the body and its hope of return to the divine.

Epithets

• Kore Κόρη — the Maiden
• Despoina Δέσποινα — the Mistress
• Praxidike Πραξιδίκη — exactor of justice
• Hagne Ἁγνή — the pure
• Proserpina Lat. — her Roman name