PROSERPINE (Proserpina), the Latin form of Persephone,' a Greek goddess, daughter of Zeus and the earth-goddess Demeter. In Greek mythology. Demeter and Proserpine were closely associated, being known together as the two goddesses, the venerable or august goddesses, sometimes as the great goddesses. Proserpine herself was commonly known as the daughter (Core), sometimes as the first-born. As she was gathering flowers with her playmates in a meadow, the earth opened and Pluto, god of the dead, appeared and carried her off to be his queen in the world below. 2 This legend was localized in various places, as at Eleusis, Lerna, and "that fair field of Enna" in Sicily. Torch in hand, her sorrowing mother sought her through the wide world, and finding her not she forbade the earth to put forth its increase. So all that year not a blade of corn grew on the earth, and men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not persuaded Pluto to let Proserpine go. But before he let her go Pluto made her eat the seed of a pomegranate, and thus she could not stay away from him for ever. 3 So it was arranged that she should spend two-thirds (according to later authors, one-half) of every year with her mother and the heavenly gods, and should pass the rest of the year with Pluto beneath the earth. 4 There can be little doubt that this is a mythological expression for the growth of vegetation in spring and its disappearance in autumn. According to Theopompus there was a Western people who actually called the spring Proserpine. As wife of Pluto, she sent spectres, ruled the ghosts, and carried into effect the curses of men. The lake of Avernus, as an entrance to the infernal regions, was sacred to her. From the head of a dying person Proserpine was supposed to cut a lock of hair which had been kept sacred and unshorn through life. 5 She was sometimes identified with Hecate. On the other hand in her character of goddess of the spring she was honoured with flower-festivals in Sicily and at Hipponium in Italy. Sicily was a favourite haunt of the two 1 Some, however, regard Proserpina as a native Latin form, not borrowed from the Greek, and connected with proserpere, meaning the goddess who aided the germination of the seed.
The story is reminiscent of the old form of marriage by capture. The idea that persons who have made their way to the abode of the dead can return to the upper world if they have not tasted the food of the dead appears elsewhere, as in New Zealand
. The Sicilians claimed to be the first on whom Demeter had bestowed the gift of corn, and hence they honoured the two goddesses with many festivals. They celebrated the festival of Demeter when the corn began to shoot, and the descent of Proserpine when it was ripe. At Cyare, a fountain near Syracuse which Pluto made to spring up when he carried off his bride, the Syracusans held an annual festival in the course of which bulls were sacrificed by being drowned in the water. The regular form of her name in Greek was Persephone, but various other forms occur: Phersephone, Persephassa, Phersephassa, Pherrephatta, &c., to explain which different etymologies were invented. Corresponding to Proserpine as goddess of the dead is the old Norse goddess Hel (Gothic Halja), whom Saxo Grammaticus calls Proserpine.
