The Rape of Proserpina

Our cultural ancestors.

The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world. Completed in 8 (or 1) AD, it has remained one of the most popular works of mythology, being the Classical work best known to medieval writers and thus having a great deal of influence on medieval poetry.

His collection of my myths (that obviously predate him)is considered the most important of the Greco-Roman kind. He recorded these myths that were part of an oral tradition of storytelling. They were a part of the ancient tradition of creating myths to entertain audiences and explain the natural world and the origins of it. Thanks to him they have survived.

These myths are where the classic names and words like Pygmalion and Narcissus and Echo come from.

The Rape of Proserpina

The players-
Proserpina: Her story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Persephone.

Ceres: Goddess of cereals, agriculture, growing plants or of the Earth and of motherly love. She was usually equated with the Greek goddess Demeter. She was the daughter of Saturn and Ops, wife-sister of Jupiter(Zeus), mother of Proserpina by Jupiter and sister of Juno, Vesta, Neptune and Pluto(Hades).

The Romans adopted Ceres in 496 BC during a devastating famine, when the Sibylline books advised the adoption of her Greek equivalent Demeter, along with Kore (Persephone) and Iacchus (possibly Dionysus).
Just too perfect.

Jupiter(Jove): He was the king of the gods, and the god of sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon. In Latin mythology Jupiter is the father of the god Mars. Therefore, Jupiter is the grandfather of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. Brother of Pluto.

Pluto: He was the Roman god of the underworld, the counterpart of the Greek Hades. Brother and then son-in law of Jupiter.


The beginning:

Ceres was the first
To split open the grassland with a plowshare.
The first
To plant corn and nurse harvests.
She was the first to give man laws

Everything man has he owes to Ceres
So now I sing of her
And so I pray my song may be worthy
Of this great goddess.

Another portion (from a different translation):

And tore her golden hair, and beat her breast.
She knows not on what land her curse shou'd fall,
But, as ingrate, alike upbraids them all,
Unworthy of her gifts; Trinacria most,
Where the last steps she found of what she lost.
The plough for this the vengeful Goddess broke,
And with one death the ox, and owner struck,
In vain the fallow fields the peasant tills,
The seed, corrupted ere 'tis sown, she kills.
The fruitful soil, that once such harvests bore,
Now mocks the farmer's care, and teems no more.
And the rich grain which fills the furrow'd glade,
Rots in the seed, or shrivels in the blade;
Or too much sun burns up, or too much rain
Drowns, or black blights destroy the blasted plain;
Or greedy birds the new-sown seed devour,
Or darnel, thistles, and a crop impure
Of knotted grass along the acres stand,
And spread their thriving roots thro' all the land.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Ovid
• Proserpina
• Ceres
• Jupiter
• Pluto
• mythology
• civilization
• agriculture

[themajikat]

Terrified she screamed for her mother, And screamed to her friends. But louder And again and again to her mother. She ripped her from from her throat downwards- So all her cherished flowers scattered in a shower. Then in her childishness She screamed for her flowers as they fell, While her ravisher leaper with her Into his chariot, shouting to the horses (skip two lines because they don't fit) And they were off. They were gone- Leaving the ripped turf and the shocked faces.

[themajikat]

I guess it wasn't physical, though it does use the word ravisher, but that fits with the different definition. I thought it was weird, i just assumed it was our definition and the actual 'rape' was left out as either obscene or left to the imagination of implied. Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know that.

[ghostwriter511]

It's funny, I was obsessed with Greek (and in turn Roman) mythology, in middle school, which let me say, I was not one of the "cool kids," and I thought, as many do, that for any situation or idea there is a parallel in the Greek mythology.

I guess you just proved that.

Kind of like the way Daniel Quinn parallels stories from the bible with the onset of totalitarian agriculture.

[themajikat]

I think I might do a series on mythology.

I think that he doesn't just parallel or reinterpret them but shows the actual meaning of them. When I read the Cain and Abel part for the first time I gasped outloud at the revelation. I think they were actually written with that intent, as an expression of the ideas of the culture, just as this was.

[zezt]

...when they continually rape and murder her.

Dont know if you done Gilgamesh, but checkout feminist critiques of the monomyth of the hero's journey which in written down myth stems from the Babylonian Enuma Elish

[zezt]

the rape of Kore is patriarchal subversion similar to Genesis Garden of Eden myth and is their toxic myth against the Goddess.

Dig...they RAPE her, and then BLAME HER, and nature, when she naturally gets mad!!

[NothingMoreBlack]

Hi,

so...I am wondering when you say 'rape' do u mean that hades kidnapped persephone, since during those times rape meant to be abducted?

Or is the rape physical?