# Persephone and Hades: What Season? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 20, 2011, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792 "2011-12-20T00:49:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/1 "2011-12-20T00:49:43Z")
I recently quipped “Persephone is the Reason for the Season” to a friend…and he said that Persephone actually visits Hades during the Summer, not during the Winter as I was always taught. I looked in Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” and she said Persephone must go away from Demeter for four months during the Winter. But my friend says that it’s the summer, not the winter, when crops don’t grow, because of the Mediterranean heat in Greece. So: factual question 1: during which months was Persephone said to be lost to Demeter while visiting Hades? 2: Where did the story originate? Was it first in Hesiod? Or Homer? Or somebody else? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/2 "2011-12-20T01:36:15Z")
The [Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone) supports it being the dry summer months that Persephone was below ground, and says the myth appears first in Hesiod. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/3 "2011-12-20T01:40:50Z")
Oops. Okay, my stupid. I didn’t think it would be on WP, and didn’t look… ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/4 "2011-12-20T01:58:42Z")
As a total hijack, I would mention that this myth is the inspiration for one of my all time favorites sculptures, which everyone should see if given the opportunity: > **[The Rape of Proserpina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Proserpina)** > > The Rape of Proserpina (Italian: Rapimento di Proserpina), more accurately translated as the Abduction of Proserpina, is a large Baroque marble group sculpture by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, executed between 1621 and 1622, when Bernini's career was in its early stage. The group, finished when Bernini was just 23 years old, depicts the abduction of Proserpina, who is seized and taken to the underworld by the god Pluto. It features Pluto holding Proserpina aloft, and a Cerberus to Cardin... You can see it at the Borghese gallery in Rome (you need to buy tickets and schedule ahard of time, you can’t just show up like most museums). There’s also a pretty nice copy at Versailles. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/5 "2011-12-20T02:45:38Z")
**Darth Panda** : nifty! I’d seen pictures of that one before, but there were details in that link I hadn’t seen. Bernini is fantastic, eh? [His bust of Medusa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Medusa_Bernini_Musei_Capitolini.jpg) is haunting: the sheer amount of woe in that face is overwhelming. (I have a reproduction of that on my bookshelf at home… Facing the wall, and only visible in a mirror behind it. Safety First!) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/6 "2011-12-20T08:50:31Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > As a total hijack, I would mention that this myth is the inspiration for one of my all time favorites sculptures, which everyone should see if given the opportunity: > > [The Rape of Proserpina - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Proserpina) > > You can see it at the Borghese gallery in Rome (you need to buy tickets and schedule ahard of time, you can’t just show up like most museums). There’s also a pretty nice copy at Versailles. Wow, dude was only 23 when he sculpted that?! He sure learned his trade fast. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/7 "2011-12-20T08:51:27Z")
So did it gradually shift to being in winter, or is Hamilton (and thus everything I was formally taught about Greek Mythology) wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/8 "2011-12-20T12:20:40Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > So did it gradually shift to being in winter, or is Hamilton (and thus everything I was formally taught about Greek Mythology) wrong? I think a big part of it is that is the story indicates that the Earth would greet her with flowers upon her return - hence, Spring. And if she’s showing up in Spring, she must have been gone in Winter, right? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2011, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/9 "2011-12-20T22:49:52Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > So did it gradually shift to being in winter, or is Hamilton (and thus everything I was formally taught about Greek Mythology) wrong? My friend’s claim is that it was re-interpreted by northern Europeans. We English-speakers got it from English translations, and, in England, everyone knows that it’s the winter when nothing grows… I thought he was full of bat-poo, but he seems to have been right about the basic claim, so, maybe we’ve been suckered by borealcentrism? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/10 "2011-12-21T06:32:03Z")
The interpretation that “nothing grows in the Summer on Mediterranean regions” is so wrong I can’t begin to describe it. Summer is the time for ripening, the time when we get the best vegetables and the juiciest fruits (including early varieties of grapes). High summer is too hot for picking anything except in the earliest hours: my brother’s summer job picking fruit would have him getting up before the crack of dawn, because the idea was to be done with the daily 8 hours before the “hours of molten lead”. He’d be home in time for 2pm lunch (sunlight’s noon). I don’t know what the original was, but whomever said that “things don’t grow (or are picked) in the Mediterranean basin during summer” was either full of manure or amazingly ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/11 "2011-12-21T22:20:23Z")
My fault for quoting my friend, who was, himself, hyperbolizing. He was basically emphasizing the summery conditions that led to the original myth portraying Demeter as sad and forlorn for the absence of her daughter. Obviously, Greece does have a summer growing season. That’s why I thought the notion of Persephone being absent in summer was goofy. Greece may not have the same kinds of winters as England or Germany, but it does have winters! Anyway, someone else said it was my fault for not reading Messner-Loebs’ and Kieth’s “Epicurus the Sage,” a hilarious graphic novel wherein Epicurus, aided by the young Alexander the Great (!) rescue Persephone from Hades (!!!) Ancient myths the way they _should_ have been. (And it depicts the season of absence as winter.) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/12 "2011-12-21T22:57:27Z")
The Homeric Hymns seem to say it’s winter: > [@](#): > > And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother’s sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her. But while Demeter was still holding her dear child in her arms, her heart suddenly misgave her for some snare, so that she feared greatly and ceased fondling her daughter and asked of her at once: “My child, tell me, surely you have not tasted any food while you were below? Speak out and hide nothing, but let us both know. For if you have not, you shall come back from loathly Hades and live with me and your father, the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honored by all the deathless gods; but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. **But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for gods and mortal men.** And now tell me how he rapt you away to the realm of darkness and gloom, and by what trick did the strong Host of Many beguile you?” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/13 "2011-12-22T05:06:57Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > The Homeric Hymns seem to say it’s winter: This is making me wonder about the Hesiod. Does anyone have a copy that is well-searchable? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2011, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persephone-and-hades-what-season/606792/14 "2011-12-22T06:45:58Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > This is making me wonder about the Hesiod. Does anyone have a copy that is well-searchable? Here: > **[The Theogony of Hesiod | Sacred Texts Archive](https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm)** > > Classical Texts: (ll. 1-25) From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about t... Here’s what the Theogony says about Persephone: > [@](#): > > There, [The gateway under the earth-CA] in front, stand the echoing halls of the god of the lower-world, strong Hades, and of awful Persephone. A fearful hound guards the house in front, pitiless, and he has a cruel trick. On those who go in he fawns with his tail and both is ears, but suffers them not to go out back again, but keeps watch and devours whomsoever he catches going out of the gates of strong Hades and awful Persephone. . . . > > Also [Zeus] came to the bed of all-nourishing Demeter, and she bare white-armed Persephone whom Aidoneus [Hades-CA] carried off from her mother; but wise Zeus gave her to him. So, all the Theogony says about Persephone is that she and Hades rule over the land of the dead, she’s the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and that Hades abducted her because Zeus gave her to him. The whole thing about Demeter searching for her and cursing the earth, and Hades tricking her with the pomegranate so she’ll stay with him, that’s not in his stuff. It is, however, in the Homeric Hymns.