finelythreadedsky:

Anon, I study Ancient Greek literature and can assure you that the oldest attestation of the Persephone myth we have (the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, written down around the seventh or sixth century BCE and circulated orally before that) is QUITE clear that it was, in fact, rape and abduction and that Persephone did not consent to any of it. The language is not remotely ambiguous and it is impossible to construe any of it as consensual. Let’s take a look:

The text opens:

Δήμητρ᾽ ἠύκομον, σεμνὴν θεόν, ἄρχομ᾽ ἀείδειν,

αὐτὴν ἠδὲ θύγατρα τανύσφυρον, ἣν Ἀιδωνεὺς

ἥρπαξεν…

I begin to sing of lovely-haired Demeter, a powerful goddess, and her slender-ankled daughter, whom Hades stole away…

The bolded word, which I have translated as “stole away,” is a verb used to describe abduction and rape. When the object of this verb is a human being, it is quite clear that the action is nonconsensual, either kidnapping, rape, or both, if the object is female. This word directly translated into Latin as “rapere,” which is the etymological origin of our English word “rape.” Both the Greek and the Latin terms refer more to abduction than “rape” as we use the word today, but implicit in that word is the reality that any woman abducted in ancient mythology would have also been forced into sex.

See also lines 19 and 20:

ἁρπάξας δ᾽ ἀέκουσαν ἐπὶ χρυσέοισιν ὄχοισιν

ἦγ᾽ ὀλοφυρομένην…

Stealing her away, he put her, unwilling and wailing, onto his golden chariot

These lines repeat the verb of kidnapping/rape used in line 2, and they also reiterate Persephone’s unwillingness by adding an unambiguous adjective saying that she did not consent to or participate in her departure from the world, if the mention that she was crying out wasn’t enough. This adjective is used in Greek to denote that the action happened against the will of the person it described.

It is pretty clear that sex has occurred between that and the next time the narrative returns to Persephone, and that Persephone did not consent to that sex, at 342-344:

τέτμε δὲ τόν γε ἄνακτα δόμων ἔντοσθεν ἐόντα,

ἥμενον ἐν λεχέεσσι σὺν αἰδοίῃ παρακοίτι,

πόλλ᾽ ἀεκαζομένῃ μητρὸς πόθῳ…

He (Hermes, sent by Zeus) found the lord (Hades) within his halls, lying in bed with his honorable bedmate, who was very much unwilling and yearned for her mother.

The first two lines are about as explicit as the hymn can get in saying that they have had sex (the second bolded term specifically refers to a sexual partner and literally means “person you lie down with”). They actually may be having sex at the moment Hermes finds them (the first bolded phrase may refer to a marriage bed or a banquet bed, since the Greeks ate formal dinners lying on couches/beds, but only in the first context would a man and a woman be on the same couch together). And then in the very next line the hymn tells us that this all happens against Persephone’s will.

Hermes conveys to Hades that Zeus has ordered that Persephone be returned, and he essentially says to her “go, and tell your mother I’d be a good husband to you, since I am the brother of Zeus and a powerful god and you would be powerful as my wife.” Then he pulls the famous thing with the pomegranate seeds at 371-373:

…αὐτὰρ ὅ γ᾽ αὐτὸς

ῥοιῆς κόκκον ἔδωκε φαγεῖν μελιηδέα λάθρῃ,

ἀμφὶ ἓ νωμήσας…

He secretly gave her the seed of a sweet pomegranate to eat, controlling her all around

Now the bit that I’ve translated as “controlling her all around” is actually kind of ambiguous, and the verb could mean “watching her,” “giving it to her,” or “manipulating her,” so I’ll discount that for the moment. But the bolded word is very explicit that this was done without Persephone’s knowledge or consent. It has pretty negative connotations and can also mean “treacherously,” but it certainly denotes that Persephone did not understand what Hades was doing.

Persephone herself later describes this same event to her mother, after she knows that eating in the Underworld has bound her to it, at 411-413:

…αὐτὰρ ὃ λάθρῃ

ἔμβαλέ μοι ῥοιῆς κόκκον, μελιηδέ᾽ ἐδωδήν,

ἄκουσαν δὲ βίῃ με προσηνάγκασσε πάσασθαι. 

He secretly put the seed of a pomegranate into me, sweet food, and he forced me by violence to eat it, though I was unwilling.

Persephone repeats the emphasis on her unwillingness and further adds that she was forced to eat the seed. The language she uses describes Hades ‘putting the pomegranate in her,’ a departure from the way he was described as ‘giving’ it to her earlier, calls up sexual imagery and suggests that Persephone is not talking only about the pomegranate seeds, but other things that were forced upon her as well. The way she describes being forced to eat the seeds “by violence,” a term that indicates compulsion by physical force, also has connotations of rape and sexual violence. This term, when used of a male subject and female object, functions as a euphemism for rape, as does its Latin equivalent, vis.

Persephone also repeats the narration of lines 19 and 20 in lines 431 and 432, again emphasizing her unwillingness:

βῆ δὲ φέρων ὑπὸ γαῖαν ἐν ἅρμασι χρυσείοισι

πόλλ᾽ ἀεκαζομένην: ἐβόησα δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ὄρθια φωνῇ.

Taking me with him, he went under the earth in his golden chariots, very much against my will: I went down with a cry.

The text repeatedly emphasizes, in a very clear and unambiguous way, that none of this was consensual. I was actually surprised, the first time I read it, at how much focus was placed on Persephone’s unwillingness and how impossible it was to read it as anything other than abduction and rape. Honestly, I am still surprised at just how explicit it is about the rape occurring. It is absolutely not just an implication; the text is very clear that sex occurred to which Persephone did not consent. Other ancient tellings of the story concur that Persephone’s descent to the Underworld, her marriage to Hades, and any sex she had with Hades were not her choice. The idea that any of this was consensual is misinformation that is, unfortunately, widely circulated on Tumblr. No reputable source or legitimate translation will suggest that this was not abduction or rape.

I can also assure you that the vast majority of ancient weddings did not involve actual kidnappings. That would have never been tolerated by the bride’s parents, let alone the bride. Weddings did sometimes include stylized elements of kidnapping: for instance, Plutarch (Lycurgus 15.3) describes a Spartan custom of staging a mock-kidnapping where the bride was taken to a bridesmaid (likely a female relative or friend of hers), who cut her hair and left her alone in a room where the groom would come and ‘rescue’ her (keep in mind, though, that Plutarch was writing in the second century CE and was not a Spartan, so he was writing about customs wholly unfamiliar to him and which he was inclined to view negatively). But these theatrical customs were in no way indicative that the wedding was actually a kidnapping. The bride was well aware of what was happening and had likely been involved in the planning, and most other Greek cultures did not even go as far as the Spartans. The myth of Persephone is also supposed to predate all of these mortal customs, so she would not have been remotely aware of this even kidnapping were a normalized thing.