Still furious at Aphrodite's involvement in her past affair with Adonis, Persephone instead filled Psyche's rosewood box with Stygian sleep, the very essence of the Underworld. Persephone was visited by Psyche, who had been sent by Aphrodite to retrieve some of Persephone's beauty cream. After Adonis decided to spend his third time of the year with Aphrodite, he was stabbed to death by a wild boar of Ares, Aphrodite's immortal lover. During the time he spent with her, Adonis would have to hide in closets and under Persephone's bed every time Hades entered her chambers, since the god didn't know about his wife's lover. With them unable to reach a compromise, the two took Adonis to Mount Olympus, where Zeus decided that it would be best for Adonis to spend a third of each year with each respective goddess, and have the final third to himself. By this time, the two goddesses fell in love with Adonis and began fighting over him. The child would eventually grow up into the most handsome man in the world. Both goddesses taking turns raising the boy, shuffling him back and forth between Aphrodite's palace on Cyprus and Hades' Palace. When the beautiful Naiad Minthe bragged about Hades' love for her and claimed to be more beautiful than Persephone, the infuriated goddess instantly appeared before her and transformed her into the plant mint.Īfter a beautiful child was born from a tree, Aphrodite chose Persephone to help her raise him in the Underworld so no one could desire his beauty besides herself. When Hades kidnapped the beautiful Oceanid Leuke, a jealous Persephone asked her husband to kill Leuke, but he transformed her into a poplar tree. This is when he would have some affairs, but they usually ended badly. Though he was mostly faithful compared to other gods, Hades was quite lonely during the time Persphone spent with Demeter. When Persephone is with her husband in the Underworld, the Earth once again becomes barren as Demeter is too depressed to work properly. When Demeter and Persephone are together, the Earth flourishes with vegetation in Demeter's happiness. In order to calm both Demeter and Hades, Zeus ordered Persephone to return to the Underworld for six months each year. Before Persephone was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, a servant of Hades tricked Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds. However, it was a rule of the Fates that whoever consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who heard their anguish, Zeus finally forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother. Hades was determined to make Persephone love him and gave her many gifts and riches. She hated him for snatching her away from her mother until he asked the dead gardeners of the Underworld to make a field of her favorite plants. Angered and heartbroken, Demeter stopped caring for the Earth, so the land didn't flourish anymore and people began to starve and die. Hecate, goddess of magic, told Demeter she had heard Persephone scream when she was being kidnapped. Life came to a standstill as the devastated Demeter searched everywhere for her lost daughter. One day, Persephone was picking flowers with some of her nymphs in a field in Enna when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. He asked for help from Zeus, despite his estrangement with his brother. One day, he spotted her in the fields and became entranced by her beauty. Persephone's uncle, Hades, was very lonely and wanted a wife. Despite this, she said that Persephone could have married the god of doctors. When she reached marriageable age, several gods tried to woo Persephone, but Demeter, who suffered many horrible courtships, rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of other deities. She mostly passed her days planting seeds and nurturing the flora. As she wasn't one of her father's favorite children, she had no position at Olympus and used to live far away with her mother's closest nymphs. Persephone was born to Zeus, king of the gods, and Demeter, goddess of the harvest.
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