You may think you know the ancient Greek tale of Hades and Persephone. But the story's been around for thousands of years, and the way it's changed and been perceived over time is like a mythological game of telephone.
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00:00It's a classic story. Boy meets girl, boy kidnaps girl, girl's mom almost destroys the
00:05world, and then girl's dad negotiates a shared custody agreement. And that's how it got winter.
00:09By the way, the boy is technically the girl's uncle, and all of those people are gods. This,
00:14in essence, is the story of Hades and Persephone. But this ancient myth has gotten pretty misunderstood
00:19over the centuries. So to really get what it's trying to tell us, we're gonna have to
00:22think like ancient Greeks.
00:24To start, let's tell the story. It's a good one. And it's short. Persephone was the daughter
00:28of gods Zeus and Demeter. Hades, god of the underworld and also Zeus's brother, popped
00:34up for a visit, spotted Persephone, and knew he had to marry her.
00:37You're his brother. You are the god of death.
00:42But knowing Demeter wouldn't be keen on the idea of her daughter relocating to the realm
00:45of the dead, he sought and received Zeus's permission to abduct her. When Demeter couldn't
00:50find her daughter, she was beside herself and set out wandering the land to find her,
00:54forbidding the Earth from producing anything in her despair. Since she was the goddess
00:58of the harvest, this was a bad thing.
01:00Eventually, Helios, the god of the sun, um, shined some light on the truth to Demeter.
01:05An angry Demeter, plus a lot of very hungry Greeks, pressured Zeus to order Hades to send
01:10Persephone back to the living.
01:12Hades, you're where you belong, down in the dark!
01:16Hades had a trick up his sleeve, you see. He kept Persephone starving, but tempted her
01:20with pomegranate seeds. Once he tasted the food of the underworld, he'd never escape
01:25it.
01:26Here's where math comes in. It's always math. Persephone ate six seeds, so Zeus negotiated
01:31a deal. Hades gets Persephone down there for six months, and the other six months she gets
01:36to hang out with her mama on Earth. This way, at least half the year, Demeter would allow
01:40crops to grow. And there you have it. Now we got seasons.
01:45Modern storytellers have added shades of meaning to the tale of Hades and Persephone that folks
01:49assume come from the original. Often, such misreading stems from grafting current-day
01:54narrative conventions and moral values onto ancient peoples. For example, a 21st-century
01:59grad student might ask why Persephone has so little agency, when agency wasn't a thing
02:04back then. I mean, everyone just glosses over the fact that Hades and Zeus, her father,
02:09were brothers. They're just going to ignore the fact that her uncle fell in love with
02:13her and kidnapped her?
02:14Anyway, this misinterpretation is especially true because stories like Hades and Persephone's
02:19have been rewoven into numerous contemporary forms. Hades is often depicted as a cruel
02:24autocrat under whose thumb a rebellious Persephone chafes — a very modern-day take. But the
02:30truth is, happiness in marriage wasn't expected by the ancient Greeks. The day-to-day substance
02:35of Hades and Persephone's relationship, whether struggle-ridden, amicable, lovey-dovey, or
02:39whatever, isn't mentioned in the myth at all.
02:42I knew her mother, Demeter, would never approve of me.
02:47The original tale is more about Demeter, Persephone's mother, and seasons, and mother-daughter relations.
02:53All the marriage stuff and husband-wife relations is a modern twist of the tale.
02:58So now you get that the story of Hades and Persephone explains the turning of the seasons.
03:03Seasonal awareness was absolutely critical to societies like those of Hellas, the ancient
03:08name for modern-day Greece, where you mess up a harvest and everyone starves. For the
03:13most part, the yearly cycle of the seasons remains stable. We move from spring to summer
03:17to autumn to winter, and that at least can be predicted. Why? It's all because Demeter
03:23misses her daughter, of course.
03:25Winter has ended. I must return to Mount Olympus.
03:29We've got evidence of this tale going back to 1500 BC, well before it appeared in written
03:34form. Back then, Hellenes erected a stone temple to Demeter at Eleusis, which became
03:39a focal point for sacrifices to the goddess going forward. It was critical to keep Demeter
03:43happy because her moods determined the seasons.
03:47Sometimes it isn't so much that people have been told a lie about Hades and Persephone,
03:51but rather that they've jumped to conclusions. Folks often mistakenly assume writers of stories
03:55are tacit proponents of what happens in the story. In other words, some believe that because
04:00the story of Hades and Persephone contains a kidnapping and forced marriage, that the
04:04story advocates such actions. This couldn't be further from the truth.
04:08In 880s Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid wrote his own version of the Hades and Persephone
04:13tale, in which he described Persephone as terrified and forced. Her mother Demeter was
04:18duly furious and, quote, "...blamed all countries and cried out against their base in gratitude,
04:23before stripping away the gift of corn."
04:25Back in those days, marriage was looked on as more of a business arrangement than a partnership
04:30or love match. This doesn't happen in the story. Instead, Hades goes behind Demeter's
04:34back and takes what he wants.
04:36"...Hades, for crying out loud."
04:38Also at the time, families followed a set of traditions and prescribed rituals when
04:42a marriage took place. This doesn't happen in the story, either. Some elements of the
04:45tale are true to life, though. There was a big age difference between Hades and Persephone,
04:50which is accurate. In ancient Greece, men married at about 30, while their wives ranged
04:55from 14 to 18. Persephone more or less moved in with Hades in his family home, which is
05:00also accurate. The big takeaway often missed is that the story inverts ancient Greek values
05:05because Hades doesn't show respect to Demeter by requesting her formal consent to marry
05:09Persephone. To the ancient Greeks, this would have rendered the story a cautionary moral
05:13tale about how to undergo a proper marital union. Plus, there's the whole uncle thing.
05:19Happiness and love might have existed in some marriages, but that was just good luck, and
05:23besides the point. Like we said, these were just straight-up business deals and a way
05:26to keep the society going by producing future workers, a.k.a. children. Love had nothing
05:32to do with it.
05:33"...I don't need a man to be happy."
05:35And yet, time and again, contemporary readers misconstrued the story of Hades and Persephone
05:39by making love and happiness the central issue of the tale, especially Persephone's. This
05:44couldn't be further from the original intent of the story.
05:47According to the University of Oxford, the concept of love in a romantic sense in stories
05:52didn't even exist until the 12th century A.D. It originated with the medieval era values
05:57of fealty, chivalry, and loyalty. Think knights rescuing damsels in distress, and that kind
06:01of thing. The concept of romantic love evolved throughout the Renaissance, Enlightenment,
06:06and modern eras, egged on by lots and lots of poetry. This grand, centuries-long evolution
06:11happened millennia after the Hellenes lived and invented the story of Hades and Persephone.
06:16Strangely, and even disturbingly, the story of Hades and Persephone has often been respawned
06:21as a kind of hot, sexy paperback romance. Themes in this case revolve around suppressed
06:26sexuality, possession of another person, control, domination, and other such things that would
06:31tickle sigmatroid Hank. Plus, have I mentioned the whole uncle thing? I have? How about one
06:37more time? He was our uncle in the story.
06:40But that kind of erotic take is not only patently untrue when looking at the tale's original
06:45text, but speaks 100% of us moderns, not ancient peoples.
06:49When two souls are meant to be together, nothing can keep them apart.
06:55We can arguably trace the false erotic angle back to an extremely influential Bernini sculpture
07:00from around 1621 dubbed The Rape of Persephone, and at present, the sculpture and its title
07:06have nearly eclipsed the influence of the original text. It stands to reason that the
07:10hot, sexy couple angle is a reflexive attempt on the part of moderns to cope with the unpleasantness
07:15of the original text's kidnapping and forced marriage one. And in their effort to reframe
07:19what's considered an unpleasant story, folks have redressed the power imbalance of Hades
07:23and Persephone into something more palatable to contemporary sensibilities.
07:28Our final lie-slash-misinterpretation stems from the same discomfort that moderns feel
07:32about what looks like, to us, a case of criminal abduction and child abuse. We're talking about
07:37the sizable age difference between Hades and Persephone.
07:41While both were immortal gods, Hades is usually conceived of as a solidly middle-aged man,
07:46while Persephone is envisioned as a young woman. But, like we said before, that was
07:51just how things were back then — teens marrying men in their 30s. In fact, no Helene would
07:56have batted an eyelash at this facet of the story.
07:59Once again, the point of the original tale was to demonstrate how Hades offended Demeter,
08:03the mother of his wife — and sister-in-law, because I can't shake that part of it — by
08:08not following proper protocols and receiving a formal declaration of consent to marry.
08:12This was such an offensive move, especially between gods, that it changed the entire
08:16natural order and created the cycle of the seasons.
08:19During the time she spends here, Demeter makes certain everyone suffers as she does.
08:26While each Greek city-state had its own practices and customs regarding marriage,
08:30men generally married when they were older than women because of military
08:33obligations in their youth. Women, meanwhile, generally married as soon as they were capable
08:37of having children, since carrying on the race was one of the primary functions of marriage.
08:42No children meant no future society, and the Helenes were serious about that.
08:46In fact, city-states viewed unmarried girls as a, quote, problematic demographic.
08:51"...Persephone! Don't ignore me!"
08:55"...Or what? I'm already in hell."
08:58And once a woman married and was adopted into her husband's household,
09:01dowry and all, part of the husband's role was to, more or less, raise her into adulthood.