Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth

by Natalie Haynes

It begins with a brief precis: Demeter of the lovely hair has her slender-ankled daughter snatched by Aidoneus (a poetic variation of Hades), and Zeus gave her to him.1 That these three deities are siblings, so that it is Demeter’s brothers who are conspiring to kidnap her child, goes unmentioned. So does Persephone’s name, although her youth is referenced obliquely because she is paidzousan – playing like a child – with the daughters of Oceanus. The scene is all bucolic innocence: girls picking flowers in a field together. But even the earth is in on Zeus’s deception. Gaia – the earth goddess – causes a huge blossoming of narcissus flowers to act as bait for Persephone. She is still unnamed, but here called kalukopidi – the girl with a face as beautiful as a flower.