The Myth of Persephone and the Hymn to Demeter

The myth of Persephone survives from at least 2000 BC and has informed art and storytelling in literature, poetry, dance, and theatre throughout the centuries (Foley 1999, 151–69). Though myth formed part of Greek theology, it was a religion with no formal ‘divine scripture’ nor ‘priestly class of interpreters’ and was instead lived through ritual and mythic storytelling (Foley 1999, 84). Linked to a significant ritual in ancient Greece — the Eleusinian mysteries — the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is an example of the way myths are ‘endlessly changed and reimagined for every generation by its artists and poets,’ where each successive generation ‘is left to fill in what we experience as the gaps and to explain the religious significance of the story in the context of his/her knowledge’ (Foley 1999, 84–5). Yet, as the myth appears in a range of cultural and political epochs, its original ‘meaning’ — intended or otherwise — remains contested. This malleability nevertheless makes it, as Hayes notes, a palimpsest, for each time it is retold it reveals ‘vital changes in the relationship between human beings and the natural world, as well as major shifts in the economy of social power over the millennia’ (1994a, 2).