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General Information about Persephone
Persephone/Kore, goddess, Demeter’s daughter by Zeus, Hades’ wife and queen of the underworld. Her most important myth is that of her abduction by Hades, her father’s brother, who carried her off when she was picking flowers in a meadow and took her to the underworld. Demeter’s unsuccessful search for her daughter (which took her to Eleusis) and consequent withdrawal from her normal functions caused the complete failure of crops; men would have starved if Zeus had not intervened. When Demeter did not respond to the persuasion of the divine messengers he sent to mediate, Zeus sent Hermes to persuade Hades to release Persephone, which he did; but Hades tricked Persephone and made her eat some pomegranate seeds, with the consequence that she could not leave Hades for ever, but had to spend part of the year with her husband in the underworld and part of the year with her mother in the upper world. The story is told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a text which has a complex relationship with what may well have been the most important cult involving Persephone and Demeter, that of the Eleusinian mysteries, the celebration of which included a ritual search for Kore with torches.
In the images Kore/Persephone is represented as a young woman, often with the addition of attributes, among which torches, stalks of grain, and sceptres are common, while some, like the cock at Locri Epizephyrii, are found especially in the iconography of particular cults.
The name Kore (‘Maiden’) stresses her persona as Demeter’s daughter, Persephone that as Hades’ wife. (Her name also occurs in other forms, for example, Phersephone, or, in Attic, Pherrephatta.) The myth of her rape was perceived as, among many other things, a polarized articulation of some perceptions pertaining to marriage from the viewpoint of the girl. Her cult in some places, notably Locri Epizephyrii, stresses this aspect. Her wedding had an important place in Locrian cult and myth and she was worshipped also as the protector of marriage and the women’s sphere, including the protection of children. Demeter does not seem to have had a prominent place in the Locrian cult. Persephone’s wedding and the flowerpicking that preceded the abduction were also celebrated in other places, as, for example, in Sicily, where her flower-picking and marriage were celebrated, and in the Locrian colony of Hipponium. The Sicilians also celebrated the bringing down of Kore to the underworld.
Of course she also had an awesome and dread aspect as the queen of the underworld. Everyone will eventually come under her authority. But she was not implacable, and she and Hades listened to reasonable requests, such as that to return to the upper world to request the performance of proper burial or other rites-- a trait abused and exploited by the dishonest Sisyphus who refused to return to Hades.
She was often worshipped in association with Demeter; a most important festival in honour of the two goddesses was the Thesmophoria, which was celebrated by women all over the Greek world (Demeter also bore the cult-title Thesmophoros, ‘law-giving’). At Cyzicus Persephone was worshipped with the epithet Soteira (Saviour) and her festival was called Pherephattia or Koreia or Soteria. (The title seems also to have been found in Arcadia). Not surprisingly, Persephone had an important place in the texts inscribed on the gold leaves that were buried with people who had been initiated into Orphism. In one strand of belief Persephone was the mother of Dionysus-Zagreus.
From: The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, edited by Simon Price and Emily Kearns, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 417.