The myth I heard about the pomegranate was that Persephone (as part of a compromise between Hades and Demeter) took a single bite of the pomegranate, and the number of seeds she got with that first bite were the number of months she would remain in the Underworld (about three or four seeds).
Yes! This is a later myth and is totally right! In this video we were just focusing on the original Greek text and then a single Roman one just to show how a single mythology can change so drastically (going into each version would have been a ridiculously long video!) So this isn’t wrong at all!!! Persephone’s myth has been rewritten so many times and the one you mentioned tends to be one of the more popular versions to read nowadays ✨
I'm glad I found this video. I was always under the assumption that Persephone and Hades were True Loves and that after eating those seeds that Persephone willingly chose to stay with her husband when given the choice to leave or return to her mother. I did not know that she hated being forced to keep returning to the underworld and being Hades Queen. I'm glad you cleared this up!
I know this is a focus on ancient Rome and Greece, but the Hades and Persephone myth can be traced all the way back to ancient Sumer. Specifically the myth of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld (or Ishtar's Descent for the later Babylonian version): Inanna (goddess of love and war) goes to attend the funeral of her sister's (Ereshkigal -- Ruler of the Underworld) husband, Gugulanna. Ereshkigal gets pissed, kills Inanna and hangs her on a hook (Inanna/Ishtar is sorta responsible for Gugulanna's death in a different story).In the Babylonian version, Ishtar death causes all sex to disappear on earth. One of Inanna's attendants tells everyone of her death, so that they can do proper mourning. But Inanna's husband, Dumuzid (god of harvests), is chillin with some ladies. Enraged, a recently revived Inanna (some gods and spirits helped her out in the interim) makes Dumuzid switch places with her and now HE'S dead. This causes harvests to fail and winter to come. Inanna relents after his sister and mother mourning for him for three days, and an arrangement is made where Dumuzid spends 6 months in the underworld with Ereshkigal, and then his sister spends the other 6 months of the year in his place. The Babylonians preserved virtually the same myth with Ishtar and Tammuz. Dumuzid/Tammuz is also linked to the story of Adonis and the mourning festivals for his death in Ancient Greece. Inanna is also the distant origin/influence of Aphrodite, as Inanna was represented by the star of Venus, in addition to being the goddess of love and war. Aphrodite had quite a temper in her stories, which likely come from Inanna.
Would be interesting to hear you talk about why the myths get rewritten. Or follow one story through different writers' interpretations. Is Is it like Pyramus and Thisbe getting rewritten as Romeo and Juliet getting rewritten as West Side Story as a way to connect with a new audience or are there other motives of the writers.
I’m confused because I was talking to my classics teacher about this and she said it was possible that persephone did love hades (we were talking specifically about the homeric hymn) and she took the seeds willingly (since we don’t have that part of the text it could make sense) and that the kidnapping part was more just shock and she really grew to love him in the underworld?
I am admittedly not well versed in Greek mythology, but I know that the stories can change over time…according to OSP at least, the version(s) where Persephone is completely willing and/or walk in herself were made by a mother who didn’t want to expose her daughter to the darker parts of the mythology. Also according to OSP, they do have the most functional relationship in the mythology, and while Hades is often portrayed as a villain in pop culture, in the mythology Hades is usually off doing in his own thing, and PERSEPHONE is the terrifying one
Thanks for this. I'm teaching about Pluto in the American Gothic painting soon and this was very useful for giving me the background to the story which apparently is what the painting is about.
Empedocles seems to make Persephone the personification of water in his four roots (elements) of the universe. However, I have never seen any evidence from mythology that Persephone is "water". Does anyone have any suggestions to solve this problem that has been bothering me for quite some time?
Persephoneia is the mother of Dionysos too :) Read in a book lying around that Hades was sometimes seen as Dionysos. Also, Hades is called Zeus Khthonios(subterranean Zeus) in the orphic hymn to Hades. Seems like Zeus/Dionysos/Hades can be interpreted as being the same god.
Ah okay, I see the confusion - so Zagreus is the child of Persephone of Zeus sometimes (most notably in Orphic myths). Zagreus is noted as “the first Dionysus”, but is ~not~ the famous god of wine! In that version, there’s a whole fiasco between Zeus and Hera (unsurprisingly) which causes Zagreus to be killed by her in a screwed up and indirect way. Then Zeus takes Zagreus’ heart, makes it into a potion, and then gives that to this mortal Semele to drink. Semele is always the mother of the god of wine Dionysus, however in that particular mythology the god of wine is the second Dionysus, being born as a result of a potion made from the first Dionysus’ heart. Hope this cleared that up!!
Pues si añades los murales de los diferentes templos dónde se adoraban estos dioses la historia es muy diferente además de que en muchos jarrones ponían a Hades y Perséfone en escenas románticas y amorosas no todo es tan claro. Además el mito a Demeter trata sobre un matrimonio arreglado no un secuestro en el sentido histórico, los antiguos solo hubiesen creido a Hades cruel si hubiese raptado a Perséfone sin permiso del padre.
You did a great job with this video, and I'm editing to add that the myth of Persephone can be seen in many lenses, with many interpretations, and that's OK. I've also seen other videos on Persephone, the most notable to me being the one by Overly Sarcastic Productions. Still, the word you mentioned involving sexual trauma is interpreted in a different way in the original text. Having said that, I in no way condone or excuse what Hades did but Hades was loyal to Persephone as was mentioned in the video. Also, Persephone was called Dread Persephone and many people were far more afraid of Persephone than Hades. Also, Persephone's eye wandered to Adonis and had him gored and that's not even mentioning Minthe. I consider Persephone one of the original girl bosses, and someone not to mess with. To reiterate, the content provider did a great job and this interpretation is valid as are the other content providers who have covered this topic and have a differing view. Different ways to look at this story.
„We have to blame Zeus“ true but can’t we blame both Zeus AND Hades bc boi yes Zeus allowed you to take Persephone but you still could’ve declined but no you’re like „oh that’s sounds great. No consent“ and did it
One of my favourite stories of Dread Persephone that I’ve heard was that her marriage to Hades was arranged by Zeus to attempt to conceal that he had raped her (thus leading to her giving birth in the underworld to the god Zagreus who was later slain and reborn as Dionysus when Athena saved his heart from his dismembered toddler corpse and placed it in Semele's womb), and it was only due to Demeter demanding she return that Persephone went back to the world above. In that story, Hades threw a feast for his new wife and the first dish she ate from was a platter of twelve peeled pomegranates, of which she ate six before being called away for some reason, and that foreshadowed her being unable to remain in the underworld all the time.
Also worth remembering that the Greek word for marriage was also the word for abduction or kidnapping. This and the role of Persephone in Mycenaean mythology as queen of the underworld with no Hades by her side leads me to prefer interpretations in which she was taken, but not entirely against her will.
@The Gamer source? I’ve heard him counted as earth shaker and a chthonic associated god of that which lay beneath the waves, but not lord of the underworld per se.
@The Gamer having taken a course in university on classical mythology which covered the Mycenaean period, I think you may have somewhat misunderstood the statements being made in that OSP video. Chthonic is not inherently underworld in the sense of land of the dead, it’s just all things dark, subterranean, death associated, and nocturnal. The undersea counts.
„But he made her his queen and she became more powerful and she’s actually equal to him“ erm 1. how can she be equal to him when the whole start of their relationship was without her consent? 2. she doesn’t owe him anything. If I get kidnapped by the son of a powerful mafia family and im forced to marry him and through that I gain power and influence, doesn’t mean I have to thank him and doesn’t mean I owe him anything.
“They call me evil. Villain. The Devil. But the joke is on them. For I don’t care what they call me. I don’t care what they think of me. I have a duty to fulfill, and such petty things can not detract me from responsibilities. All Gods have a duty to the world for we are bound to it and it’s people. But only *I* take it seriously. Only *I* don’t treat the world like my playground and the mortals as my playthings. I am firstborn of Kronos and eldest of the Olympians. Cheated out of my birthright by my own family, my own siblings! Yet I got the most important job of all, dispite no one knowing it. For in the hands of any of the lesser mature Gods I call my family, the dead would flood the world of the living. So let them spew their lies. Let them believe their falsehoods. It makes no difference nor matters not to me. After all…” *sly smirk* “All become my subjects eventually.” -Hades on Pop culture’s view of him.
The sexual trauma of persephne has been debunked, during the time of the artist who sculpted"The rape of Persephone" the word rape refered to kidnapping not sexual trauma.
Meh. I like the more modern interpretation. Ancient Greece by far was a terrible place to be female, but myths must fit their times. I admit I prefer to believe that at first, Persephone did not like Hades and saw him the way everyone else did-as a monster. But in my mind's eye, slowly, steadily, he let his considerable guard down. He revealed to her he knew things his brothers did not, and that Hephaestus was not the only craftsman among the Gods: he had all the wealth of the Earth in his realm and as a hobby he did some jewelsmithing himself. (After ages of being the warden of the biggest prison in the universe, hey, by the first millennium he realized he needed to have something in his life that was totally separate from his day job or he would lose his marbles. By the time Persephone enters his life, it is revealed who Heph's first teacher was: Hades.) He told her that it was not entirely true that nothing grew in the Underworld: more accurately, things from above grew poorly there. A lot of plants could grow nowhere else BUT the Underworld and they are the stuff of dreams…literally. Hypnos and Morpheus are part of his realm. At his behest, they collect the most imaginative plants from mortal dreams and add them to parts of the Underworld even Zeus does not know about. Others are plants that predate Hades as king. Too many to count are magical and unpredictable. She starts to revel in-at LAST-being able to dress her real age, being treated like a woman. He, of course, has no complaints: she is a beautiful woman hidden under the rags of a baggy tunic that does a bad job of hiding her real age. Hades was noted to be a bit of a berserker during the Titanomachy: Zeus was their leader, but fell beasts and minions of the Titans shit their pants at the sight of Zeus's aide de camp with all that dried blood and guts in his hair. He saw her with the nymphs that sunny day….and all 6’8” of him was too scared to approach her. He saw how her mother treated her and even heard Zeus ranting about it. Zeus's descriptions of the conversations he could steal away to have with his eldest daughter only intrigued him more and more. And then, he heard her singing. Beautiful. Truly. Over time, nature took its course. She saw that the gigantic Lord of the Underworld's job was more like being a warden, a keeper of magic, and a judge and lawyer wrapped into one. He was desperately lonely and so was she. His dog was not so tough so long as you stood your ground. They set each other free. And to Demeter's dismay, Zeus would not annul the marriage, and not just because of the pomegranate. She was truly happy with him. His brother finally had a wife. The earth would heal, and balance to the world existed again.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Love your light-hearted telling of these myths. Lots of fun.
Thank you 🫶🏼
The myth I heard about the pomegranate was that Persephone (as part of a compromise between Hades and Demeter) took a single bite of the pomegranate, and the number of seeds she got with that first bite were the number of months she would remain in the Underworld (about three or four seeds).
Yes! This is a later myth and is totally right! In this video we were just focusing on the original Greek text and then a single Roman one just to show how a single mythology can change so drastically (going into each version would have been a ridiculously long video!) So this isn’t wrong at all!!! Persephone’s myth has been rewritten so many times and the one you mentioned tends to be one of the more popular versions to read nowadays ✨
Six seeds six months
I'm glad I found this video. I was always under the assumption that Persephone and Hades were True Loves and that after eating those seeds that Persephone willingly chose to stay with her husband when given the choice to leave or return to her mother. I did not know that she hated being forced to keep returning to the underworld and being Hades Queen. I'm glad you cleared this up!
I know this is a focus on ancient Rome and Greece, but the Hades and Persephone myth can be traced all the way back to ancient Sumer. Specifically the myth of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld (or Ishtar's Descent for the later Babylonian version):
Inanna (goddess of love and war) goes to attend the funeral of her sister's (Ereshkigal -- Ruler of the Underworld) husband, Gugulanna. Ereshkigal gets pissed, kills Inanna and hangs her on a hook (Inanna/Ishtar is sorta responsible for Gugulanna's death in a different story).In the Babylonian version, Ishtar death causes all sex to disappear on earth.
One of Inanna's attendants tells everyone of her death, so that they can do proper mourning. But Inanna's husband, Dumuzid (god of harvests), is chillin with some ladies. Enraged, a recently revived Inanna (some gods and spirits helped her out in the interim) makes Dumuzid switch places with her and now HE'S dead.
This causes harvests to fail and winter to come. Inanna relents after his sister and mother mourning for him for three days, and an arrangement is made where Dumuzid spends 6 months in the underworld with Ereshkigal, and then his sister spends the other 6 months of the year in his place.
The Babylonians preserved virtually the same myth with Ishtar and Tammuz. Dumuzid/Tammuz is also linked to the story of Adonis and the mourning festivals for his death in Ancient Greece. Inanna is also the distant origin/influence of Aphrodite, as Inanna was represented by the star of Venus, in addition to being the goddess of love and war. Aphrodite had quite a temper in her stories, which likely come from Inanna.
how are you not more popular? The content is amazing!!
🥺 Thank you, Maxim! 🙈
Would be interesting to hear you talk about why the myths get rewritten. Or follow one story through different writers' interpretations. Is Is it like Pyramus and Thisbe getting rewritten as Romeo and Juliet getting rewritten as West Side Story as a way to connect with a new audience or are there other motives of the writers.
😳 this is SUCH a great idea!!! Thank you so much for the suggestion - we’ll get right on planning these videos now! 😍
Absolutely love your storytelling vibe! Thankyou so much for this video! ✨
Uhm thank YOU, classics superstar, for watching this video!!! 😱 so starstruck right now that you commented!!!!
Your HAAIIR!!!! Is NOT a mess!!!! you look gorgeous hon
💁🏻♀️
I’m confused because I was talking to my classics teacher about this and she said it was possible that persephone did love hades (we were talking specifically about the homeric hymn) and she took the seeds willingly (since we don’t have that part of the text it could make sense) and that the kidnapping part was more just shock and she really grew to love him in the underworld?
I am admittedly not well versed in Greek mythology, but I know that the stories can change over time…according to OSP at least, the version(s) where Persephone is completely willing and/or walk in herself were made by a mother who didn’t want to expose her daughter to the darker parts of the mythology. Also according to OSP, they do have the most functional relationship in the mythology, and while Hades is often portrayed as a villain in pop culture, in the mythology Hades is usually off doing in his own thing, and PERSEPHONE is the terrifying one
I've heard the same version and resonates more.
This is why is so cool watch your videos. A fun way to learn!!!👍🏻
Thank youuuuu 🤓😇
@@MoAnInc greektings from Rome!!!🤣 Love learn whatching your videos!!!!👍🏻
But In some myth Zeus did grape Hera to force her to marry him and be his queen
Coming in from your podcast! So wonderful putting a face to the voice. You’re beautiful! Keep doin what you do!!
Hahaha thank you!!! ❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for this. I'm teaching about Pluto in the American Gothic painting soon and this was very useful for giving me the background to the story which apparently is what the painting is about.
You’re welcome!
Empedocles seems to make Persephone the personification of water in his four roots (elements) of the universe. However, I have never seen any evidence from mythology that Persephone is "water". Does anyone have any suggestions to solve this problem that has been bothering me for quite some time?
Persephoneia is the mother of Dionysos too :) Read in a book lying around that Hades was sometimes seen as Dionysos. Also, Hades is called Zeus Khthonios(subterranean Zeus) in the orphic hymn to Hades. Seems like Zeus/Dionysos/Hades can be interpreted as being the same god.
Ah okay, I see the confusion - so Zagreus is the child of Persephone of Zeus sometimes (most notably in Orphic myths). Zagreus is noted as “the first Dionysus”, but is ~not~ the famous god of wine! In that version, there’s a whole fiasco between Zeus and Hera (unsurprisingly) which causes Zagreus to be killed by her in a screwed up and indirect way. Then Zeus takes Zagreus’ heart, makes it into a potion, and then gives that to this mortal Semele to drink. Semele is always the mother of the god of wine Dionysus, however in that particular mythology the god of wine is the second Dionysus, being born as a result of a potion made from the first Dionysus’ heart.
Hope this cleared that up!!
@@MoAnInc Yes, thanks. Semele must have gotten quite intoxicated drinking that :)
Pues si añades los murales de los diferentes templos dónde se adoraban estos dioses la historia es muy diferente además de que en muchos jarrones ponían a Hades y Perséfone en escenas románticas y amorosas no todo es tan claro. Además el mito a Demeter trata sobre un matrimonio arreglado no un secuestro en el sentido histórico, los antiguos solo hubiesen creido a Hades cruel si hubiese raptado a Perséfone sin permiso del padre.
14:20 Zeus grape girls all the time lmao
You did a great job with this video, and I'm editing to add that the myth of Persephone can be seen in many lenses, with many interpretations, and that's OK. I've also seen other videos on Persephone, the most notable to me being the one by Overly Sarcastic Productions. Still, the word you mentioned involving sexual trauma is interpreted in a different way in the original text. Having said that, I in no way condone or excuse what Hades did but Hades was loyal to Persephone as was mentioned in the video. Also, Persephone was called Dread Persephone and many people were far more afraid of Persephone than Hades. Also, Persephone's eye wandered to Adonis and had him gored and that's not even mentioning Minthe. I consider Persephone one of the original girl bosses, and someone not to mess with.
To reiterate, the content provider did a great job and this interpretation is valid as are the other content providers who have covered this topic and have a differing view. Different ways to look at this story.
„We have to blame Zeus“ true but can’t we blame both Zeus AND Hades bc boi yes Zeus allowed you to take Persephone but you still could’ve declined but no you’re like „oh that’s sounds great. No consent“ and did it
^^^^^^
One of my favourite stories of Dread Persephone that I’ve heard was that her marriage to Hades was arranged by Zeus to attempt to conceal that he had raped her (thus leading to her giving birth in the underworld to the god Zagreus who was later slain and reborn as Dionysus when Athena saved his heart from his dismembered toddler corpse and placed it in Semele's womb), and it was only due to Demeter demanding she return that Persephone went back to the world above. In that story, Hades threw a feast for his new wife and the first dish she ate from was a platter of twelve peeled pomegranates, of which she ate six before being called away for some reason, and that foreshadowed her being unable to remain in the underworld all the time.
Also worth remembering that the Greek word for marriage was also the word for abduction or kidnapping. This and the role of Persephone in Mycenaean mythology as queen of the underworld with no Hades by her side leads me to prefer interpretations in which she was taken, but not entirely against her will.
@The Gamer source? I’ve heard him counted as earth shaker and a chthonic associated god of that which lay beneath the waves, but not lord of the underworld per se.
@The Gamer having taken a course in university on classical mythology which covered the Mycenaean period, I think you may have somewhat misunderstood the statements being made in that OSP video. Chthonic is not inherently underworld in the sense of land of the dead, it’s just all things dark, subterranean, death associated, and nocturnal. The undersea counts.
„But he made her his queen and she became more powerful and she’s actually equal to him“ erm 1. how can she be equal to him when the whole start of their relationship was without her consent? 2. she doesn’t owe him anything. If I get kidnapped by the son of a powerful mafia family and im forced to marry him and through that I gain power and influence, doesn’t mean I have to thank him and doesn’t mean I owe him anything.
“They call me evil. Villain. The Devil. But the joke is on them. For I don’t care what they call me. I don’t care what they think of me. I have a duty to fulfill, and such petty things can not detract me from responsibilities.
All Gods have a duty to the world for we are bound to it and it’s people. But only *I* take it seriously. Only *I* don’t treat the world like my playground and the mortals as my playthings.
I am firstborn of Kronos and eldest of the Olympians. Cheated out of my birthright by my own family, my own siblings! Yet I got the most important job of all, dispite no one knowing it. For in the hands of any of the lesser mature Gods I call my family, the dead would flood the world of the living.
So let them spew their lies. Let them believe their falsehoods. It makes no difference nor matters not to me. After all…” *sly smirk* “All become my subjects eventually.”
-Hades on Pop culture’s view of him.
I always learn so much from your videos ☺❤
Thank you for watching 🥺 it means the world to know you enjoy them!!
Hades is just like me
21st Century Feminist and Greek mythology?
Yeah this was never going to be a happy ending for the Feminist.
It’s Greek mythology people.
Persephone is a Taurus ♉woman all day 🔅every day i💖 Taurus ♉
Something is going on collectively I’m also a Taurus and this story just recently caught my interest and she just posted this 6 days ago 💕
The sexual trauma of persephne has been debunked, during the time of the artist who sculpted"The rape of Persephone" the word rape refered to kidnapping not sexual trauma.
Meh. I like the more modern interpretation. Ancient Greece by far was a terrible place to be female, but myths must fit their times. I admit I prefer to believe that at first, Persephone did not like Hades and saw him the way everyone else did-as a monster.
But in my mind's eye, slowly, steadily, he let his considerable guard down. He revealed to her he knew things his brothers did not, and that Hephaestus was not the only craftsman among the Gods: he had all the wealth of the Earth in his realm and as a hobby he did some jewelsmithing himself. (After ages of being the warden of the biggest prison in the universe, hey, by the first millennium he realized he needed to have something in his life that was totally separate from his day job or he would lose his marbles. By the time Persephone enters his life, it is revealed who Heph's first teacher was: Hades.)
He told her that it was not entirely true that nothing grew in the Underworld: more accurately, things from above grew poorly there. A lot of plants could grow nowhere else BUT the Underworld and they are the stuff of dreams…literally. Hypnos and Morpheus are part of his realm. At his behest, they collect the most imaginative plants from mortal dreams and add them to parts of the Underworld even Zeus does not know about. Others are plants that predate Hades as king. Too many to count are magical and unpredictable.
She starts to revel in-at LAST-being able to dress her real age, being treated like a woman. He, of course, has no complaints: she is a beautiful woman hidden under the rags of a baggy tunic that does a bad job of hiding her real age. Hades was noted to be a bit of a berserker during the Titanomachy: Zeus was their leader, but fell beasts and minions of the Titans shit their pants at the sight of Zeus's aide de camp with all that dried blood and guts in his hair.
He saw her with the nymphs that sunny day….and all 6’8” of him was too scared to approach her. He saw how her mother treated her and even heard Zeus ranting about it. Zeus's descriptions of the conversations he could steal away to have with his eldest daughter only intrigued him more and more. And then, he heard her singing. Beautiful. Truly.
Over time, nature took its course. She saw that the gigantic Lord of the Underworld's job was more like being a warden, a keeper of magic, and a judge and lawyer wrapped into one. He was desperately lonely and so was she. His dog was not so tough so long as you stood your ground. They set each other free. And to Demeter's dismay, Zeus would not annul the marriage, and not just because of the pomegranate. She was truly happy with him. His brother finally had a wife. The earth would heal, and balance to the world existed again.
Hadesis the under world. Hades is the place. Pluton is the god of under world and he abduct Persephone