Persephone

Also known as: Proserpine · Family: Infernal deities · Role: royal consort · First appears: Fable 83

Life events

• Pluto and Persephone grant Orpheus’s request and summon Eurydice from the shades.(Fable83)
  • With: Orpheus Pluto Eurydice
  • “nor could the royal consort, nor he who rules the infernal regions, endure to deny him his request; and they called for Eurydice.”

Fable 83

• with Orpheus (Orpheus went to Persephone to plead for Eurydice's return.) “After the Rhodopeïan bard had sufficiently bewailed her in the upper {realms of} air, that he might try the shades below as well, he dared to descend to Styx by the Tænarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants and ghosts that had enjoyed the tomb, he went to Persephone, and him that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching his strings in concert with his words, he thus said”
• married with Pluto “he went to Persephone, and him that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching his strings in concert with his words, he thus said, “O ye Deities of the world that lies beneath the earth, to which we {all} come {at last}, each that is born to mortality; if I may be allowed, and you suffer me to speak the truth, laying aside[3] the artful expressions of a deceitful tongue; I have not descended hither {from curiosity} to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind the threefold throat of the Medusæan monster, bristling with serpents. {But} my wife was the cause of my coming; into whom a serpent, trodden upon {by her}, diffused its poison, and cut short her growing years. I was wishful to be able to endure {this}, and I will not deny that I have endeavoured {to do so}. Love has proved the stronger. That God is well known in the regions above. Whether he be so here, too, I am uncertain; but yet I imagine that even here he is; and if the story of the rape of former days is not untrue, ’twas love that united you {two} together.”

Fable 92

• with Mentha (Persephone is also called Proserpine.) “Proserpine was said to have changed the Nymph, ‘Mentha,’ into a plant of that name, which we call ‘mint.’”

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.