Persephone
The beautiful
daughter of Zeus and Demeter,
who was abducted by Hades
and forced to be his queen six months of the year (see Demeter).
Persephone was worshipped as the personification of the spring's arrival,
and she and her mother were honoured during the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Persephone was connected with Adonis,whom she had taken care of as a child, when Aphrodite
asked her to. Taken by the child's beauty she did not want to return him,
and the two goddesses got into a fight. It was finally decided that he would
spend one third of the year with Persephone and two thirds with Aphrodite.
When the Lapith king Perithoos wanted to marry Persephone, he and his friend
Theseus descended into
Hades. The god of Death then offered the two friends to sit on the throne
of Lethe, where their bodies grew into the rock.
According to the Orphic tradition Zeus came to Persephone as a snake, and
she bore him Dionysus-Zagreus.
In Roman mythology she was called Proserpine.
She also had the following epithets:
Carpophorus, Protogonis, Soteira, Thesmia