{ "id": "persephone", "type": "entity", "name": "Persephone", "summary": "Daughter of Zeus and Demeter, carried off by Hades with her father's consent while gathering flowers, and queen of the dead — \"dread Persephone\", \"august Persephone\" in the Odyssey. Because she ate the pomegranate seed she spends a third of every year below and two thirds with her mother. Apollodorus records a variant that makes Styx her mother; Pausanias says the Maid's real name is Persephone, as Homer says.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "greek", "deities", "chthonic", "underworld", "seasons", "eleusis" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "child_of", "target": "zeus" }, { "rel": "child_of", "target": "demeter" }, { "rel": "consort_of", "target": "hades" }, { "rel": "equivalent_of", "target": "proserpina" }, { "rel": "rules", "target": "greek-underworld" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "theogony" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "homeric-hymns" }, { "rel": "attested_in", "target": "odyssey" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "hecate" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "hermes" } ], "questions": [ "Who is Persephone?", "Who are the parents of Persephone?", "How was Persephone abducted?", "Why does Persephone spend part of the year in the underworld?", "What did Persephone eat in the underworld?", "Is Persephone the queen of the dead?", "Who is Kore or the Maid?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter: Zeus \"came to the bed of all-nourishing Demeter, and she bore white-armed Persephone whom Aidoneus carried off from her mother; but wise Zeus gave her to him\" (Theog. 912–914). The Hymn calls her Demeter's \"trim-ankled daughter\" and has her cry to \"her father, the Son of Cronos\" (HH2 1–3, 20–21).", "sources": [ "hesiod-theogony", "homeric-hymns" ], "confidence": 0.95 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "Apollodorus preserves a different mother in his list of Zeus's children — \"by Styx he had Persephone\" (Apollod. 1.3.1) — although his own account of the abduction treats her as Demeter's daughter (Apollod. 1.5.1–3). The Styx genealogy contradicts Hesiod and the Hymn and stands alone.", "sources": [ "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.88 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The abduction (HH2 4–32): playing with the daughters of Oceanus in a meadow, she reached for the narcissus \"which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus ... to be a snare for the bloom-like girl\"; \"the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa\", and Hades caught her up on his golden car; only Hecate and Helios heard her cry. She tells it again herself, naming her companions, including Athena and Artemis (HH2 405–433).", "sources": [ "homeric-hymns" ], "confidence": 0.95 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The seed and the thirds: Hades \"secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat\" (HH2 371–374); Demeter explains that having tasted food below she must \"dwell a third part of the seasons every year\" in the dark and \"for the two parts\" with the gods, returning \"when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring\" (HH2 393–403); Zeus ratifies it (HH2 445–447, 463–465). Apollodorus adds that Ascalaphus informed on her and was buried under a rock by Demeter (Apollod. 1.5.3).", "sources": [ "homeric-hymns", "apollodorus-library" ], "confidence": 0.95 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Hades promised her rule: \"you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you ... shall be punished for evermore\" (HH2 360–369); after her return \"the lady Hecate was minister and companion to Persephone\" (HH2 438–440).", "sources": [ "homeric-hymns" ], "confidence": 0.93 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "In the Odyssey she is the acting queen of the dead: Odysseus prays \"to mighty Hades and dread Persephone\" (Od. 11.45–47); \"august Persephone\" sends forth the women's shades and scatters them (Od. 11.225–226, 385–386); Anticleia calls her \"Persephone, the daughter of Zeus\" (Od. 11.215–217); and Odysseus flees lest she \"send forth ... the head of the Gorgon\" (Od. 11.633–635). Hesiod names her beside Hades at the hound-guarded halls (Theog. 767–774).", "sources": [ "homer-odyssey", "hesiod-theogony" ], "confidence": 0.94 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "Pausanias on the name: the Arcadians \"surname Demeter's daughter by Zeus the Maid. But whereas the real name of the Maid is Persephone, as Homer and Pamphos before him say in their poems\", the Mistress's name he will not write (Paus. 8.37.9); at Lerna a circle of stones marks where \"Pluto, after carrying off ... Core, the daughter of Demeter, descended\" (Paus. 2.36.7).", "sources": [ "pausanias-description" ], "confidence": 0.92 } ], "takeaways": [ "Hesiod gives the abduction and Zeus's consent in three lines; the Hymn is the narrative, told twice — by the poet and by Persephone herself.", "One third below, two thirds above — the Hymn states the fraction three times, and it is not \"half the year\".", "Apollodorus's \"by Styx he had Persephone\" is a genuine stray variant, recorded rather than smoothed away.", "Homer's Persephone acts on her own — sending and scattering the shades — while Hades is only named." ], "faqs": [ { "q": "Who are the parents of Persephone?", "claim": "c1" }, { "q": "How was Persephone abducted?", "claim": "c3" }, { "q": "Why does Persephone spend part of the year in the underworld?", "claim": "c4" }, { "q": "Is Persephone the queen of the dead?", "claim": "c6" }, { "q": "Who is Kore or the Maid?", "claim": "c7" } ], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "theoretical", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "Answers \"how long does Persephone stay in the underworld?\" from the Hymn's own arithmetic, and keeps the Styx variant and the Odyssey's active queen as distinct, cited witnesses.", "confidence": 0.93, "last_verified": "2026-09-03", "media": [], "x": { "myth": { "pantheon": "greek", "kind": "deity", "group": "chthonic", "domains": [ "the dead", "the underworld", "spring", "the yearly return" ], "symbols": [ "pomegranate", "narcissus", "golden chariot" ], "wikidata": "Q45967" } }, "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/persephone", "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/persephone.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Persephone", "description": "Daughter of Zeus and Demeter, carried off by Hades with her father's consent while gathering flowers, and queen of the dead — \"dread Persephone\", \"august Persephone\" in the Odyssey. Because she ate the pomegranate seed she spends a third of every year below and two thirds with her mother. Apollodorus records a variant that makes Styx her mother; Pausanias says the Maid's real name is Persephone, as Homer says.", "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/persephone", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-09-03", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Hesiod, Theogony — tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0020/tlg001/tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "The Homeric Hymns — tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb, 1914), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0013/" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca) — tr. Sir James George Frazer (Loeb, 1921), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0548/tlg001/tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Homer, Odyssey — tr. A. T. Murray (Loeb, 1919), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0012/tlg002/tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-eng3.xml" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Pausanias, Description of Greece — tr. W. H. S. Jones (Loeb, 1918–1935), Perseus TEI edition", "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit/blob/master/data/tlg0525/tlg001/tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-eng2.xml" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Persephone" } }