8 The Tales of Hermes and Persephone

The Tales of Hermes

Hermes is the winged herald and messenger of the Olympian gods. In addition, he is also a divine trickster, and the god of roads, flocks, commerce, and thieves. A precocious newborn, he invented the lyre and stole Apollo's cattle on the very first day of his life. Hermes was the only Olympian capable of crossing the border between the living and the dead.

According to some myths, Hermes wasn't only a messenger of the gods, but also the inventor of speech. As such, he is often associated with oratory or interpretation. In Greece, an interpreter was called hermeneus, and today the science of interpretation is known as hermeneutics.

Hermes was the only Olympian capable of crossing the boundary between the living and the dead and carrying the souls of the dead in Hades. In time, he came to be known as "the conductor" or "the leader of souls." People also called him "patron of travelers and thieves," "shepherd of men," "trickster," and "Argus-slayer."

Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, the oldest of the seven Pleiades. He was born in a cave in Mount Cyllene in Arcadia at dawn. By noon he was able to invent the lyre and play a hymn celebrating his own birth on it. That very same evening, for reasons unknown, he stole the cattle of Apollo. Afterward, he came back and innocently tucked himself up in his cradle.

To invent the lyre, Hermes killed a tortoise and scooped the flesh out of its shell. Then, honoring the Pleiades, he stretched seven strings of sheep-gut over the empty shell. Once he found out who had stolen his cattle, Apollo was so angry at Hermes that bad things might have happened if Hermes hadn't appeased Apollo with a lyre- accompanied song. In exchange for it, Apollo forgave his little brother everything and swore to be his closest friend forevermore. Some say that as a token of this promise, Apollo gifted Hermes with the latter one's most emblematic object: the caduceus.

By all accounts, Hermes was a darling of the gods. Artemis supposedly taught him how to hunt and Pan how to play the pipes. He was the one who guided Persephone back to her mother, Demeter. Above all, Hermes was very close with his father, acting in many of his affairs as Zeus' wingman. Most famously, he beheaded the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes, previously sent by Hera to closely watch over Zeus' love interest Io.

In his role as a messenger, Hermes is present in numerous other myths. He escorts Pandora to Epimetheus, leads Perseus to the Graeae, and guides Priam safely to Achilles' tent. In addition, he showed Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera the way to Mount Ida where Paris was supposed to judge which one of them was the fairest.

The Tales of Persephone

Persephone, the daughter of Demeter and Zeus, was the wife of Hades and the Queen of the Underworld. She was a dual deity, since, in addition to presiding over the dead with intriguing autonomy, as the daughter of Demeter, she was also a goddess of fertility. The myth of her abduction by Hades was frequently used to explain the cycle of the seasons. Together with her mother, she was the central figure of the Eleusinian mysteries

In Classical Greek art, Persephone was portrayed as a venerable queen, almost invariably thoroughly robbed and carrying a scepter and a sheaf of wheat. When she is depicted with her mother (as it often happens), it is Demeter who typically carries the scepter and the sheaf, while Persephone is holding a special type of a four-tipped torch which was used in the Eleusinian mysteries.

The most famous myth about Persephone is the story of her abduction.

Hades, the ruler of the Underworld, decided that he wanted to marry Persephone, Demeter's only daughter. One day, as she was gathering flowers in the Nysian meadow with her maidens, she wandered apart from the group ensnared by the sudden blooming of a glorious fragrant flower (some say it was a narcissus). As she reached to pluck it, the ground below her feet opened up and Hades, in his four-horse golden chariot, appeared before her in all his power and majesty. He snatched her and took her with him to the Underworld, to be his wife and queen.

Needless to say, Demeter wasn't very pleased when she found out from Hecate and Helios what had happened. Hurt and distraught, she started wandering aimlessly around and was aggrieved to such an extent that she neglected all her duties. And since she was the goddess of agriculture and fertility, the earth was now barren, and people were dying of famine.

Seeing no way out of it, Zeus (who some say must have approved Hades' abduction in the first place) sent Hermes to the Underworld to fetch Persephone back to her mother. The divine messenger did do precisely that, and Demeter and Persephone were once again reunited on Olympus.

However, either on her own accord or, more probably, after being tricked by Hades, Persephone had tasted one pomegranate seed before leaving the Underworld. This, according to the ancient laws, obliged her to remain in the Underworld.

Zeus proposed a compromise: Persephone would spend two-thirds of the year with her mother, and one-third with her new husband. Everybody agreed – and that's how the seasons were born and how the growth of crops was explained.

Just like a seed, Persephone spends few months of the year below the earth. This is the period of Demeter's grief which coincides with the dark, winter months. However, when the time comes for Persephone to go back to her mother, Demeter brings back the light and the warmth and the earth rejoices in abundance.

Even though she spent most of her time in the living world, almost all of the myths related to Persephone occur in the Underworld.

The tale of Adonis closely mirrors Persephone's own destiny. Namely, once both Aphrodite and Persephone fell in love with the same mortal, a handsome young man called Adonis. Since they couldn't agree between them who deserves him more, Zeus divided his time between the upper world and the Underworld. However, Adonis loved Aphrodite more and, when the time came, he refused to go back to Persephone's kingdom. Angered and hurt, the goddess of the Underworld sent a wild boar to kill Adonis, who died in Aphrodite's arms and was transformed into the anemone flower.

Most probably, Persephone didn't have any children with Hades. One of the few half-exceptions is the story of the nymph Minthe, who may have been Hades' mistress before he abducted Persephone. When Minthe boasted that she was more beautiful than Hades' new lover and that she would one day win Hades back, Persephone took care that such a thing should never happen and transformed her into the mint-plant.

Interestingly enough, Persephone differed from Hera in an even more critical manner. Unlike her, she wasn't merely Hades' consort, but also exerted considerable authority over the Underworld.

So much so that she is reported in numerous myths as the sole maker of vital decisions related to mortals, whether it is allowing Orpheus to leave Hades with Eurydice, or Heracles with Cerberus. She is also the one who lets Sysiphus go back to his wife, who agrees to the Admetus/Alcestis soul swap, and the one who grants Teiresias with the privilege of retaining his intelligence in Hades.

Once, Pirithous, the king of the Lapiths, tried to abduct Persephone with the help of his friend Theseus. The plan went awry, and he ended up tightly fixed to a seat in Hades forevermore.