10000bananatrees asked: I wrote a poem referencing Persephone "coupling" with her captor. A friend insists classical sources do not support such behavior, and that P "ate some pomegranate seeds" but "never had relations with that god", and this sex nonsense is the fault of teenagers on the internets. My counter-argument was mostly "she is a lady in GrecoRoman myth, come on", but I would like to defer to you, "Judge John Hodgeman" style. Your verdict would be, if not in my favor, at least informed and entertaining. -gil
“Never had relations with that god” is almost certainly false. The outcome of Persephone’s abduction is her official marriage to Hades. However, I have seen enough sitcoms to know that once a couple is married, they never have sex again. On the other hand, the Twilight novels of Stephenie Meyer seem to indicate that sex occurs only after marriage, so I don’t know WHO to believe. Classically, at least, theirs was a childless marriage, so…maybe they didn’t? But probably they did, get real.
However, your question seems to be more specifically, “Did they have sex during Persephone’s captivity?” The answer to which is a resounding “Who fucking knows?”
The main literary source for the rape of Persephone (which means abduction in this instance rather than necessarily sexual assault, though I guess that’s what we’re discussing) is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and the focus there is Demeter’s search for her daughter rather than what was going on in the underworld.
If anyone was going to be keen on writing a poem in which a god looks like a drooling rapist, it’s Ovid, and his retellings in the Metamorphoses and the Fasti also tell us zero about what happened between the abduction and the eating of the pomegranate seeds.
But Demeter was searching a pretty significant amount of time for Persephone, so SOMETHING had to be happening. It is a mystery akin to those eighteen minutes of dead air on the Watergate tapes, by which I mean I assume Hades and Persephone were listening to Alice’s Restaurant over and over.
The fact is this: nobody of any mythographical authority mentions what was going on during Persephone’s captivity, so it is completely up to your interpretation of Hades’ character whether or not they were knocking sandals at this time.
Personally, I have always viewed Hades as the Strong Sad of the three sons of Cronus, so in my opinion, Hades probably spent that time trying to woo her with his poetry about storm clouds as a metaphor for his dickish older brothers or impress her with his collection of Smiths records. Your mileage may vary.
Anyway, my point is this: this stuff was always changing to fit the author’s purpose; do what is thematically appropriate to your work; fuck haters.
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ellenigor said:
As I kid I thought it was so mean to steal her away, but then it felt like they slowly learned to get along. In my mythological canon they’re the stablest couple among the gods. Once Persephone made Minthe…umm, minty, Hades got the picture.
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