Demeter and Persephone: Double Goddesses of Parthenogenesis

Abstract

In the Olympian conception, Demeter was the goddess of the grain; Kore or Persephone was her daughter, the maiden goddess of the springtime and the underworld. Much of our knowledge about these two deities derives from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.1 Probably composed between 650 and 550 B.C.E., the Hymn tells the story of Persephone's abduction by her uncle Hades, god of the underworld and brother of Zeus, and of Demeter 's quest to have her returned. Demeter roams the earth, coming to Eleusis, where, disguised as an old woman, she unsuccessfully attempts to immortalize the child of the local king and, in anger over the loss of her daughter, creates a famine on earth to pressure the gods to return the girl. The gods comply, but, given that Persephone has eaten of the pomegranate in the underworld, she is constrained to return there as its queen for one-third of the year. The Hymn closes with Demeter founding the Eleusinian Mysteries.