Persephone Queen of the Underworld Quiz

Answer: Kore

Persephone was the name given to her by her husband Hades and is generally used only in her context as Queen of the Underworld. Kore is the word for "maiden". Her mother, Demeter, gave her this name at her birth with the idea of keeping her a virgin Goddess as her mother (Demeter) did not trust men immortal or otherwise. She is sometimes given the title of Kore Persephone. Persephone means "she who swallows the light".

Erinyes is not a single person but in fact a group of three women who punished people who committed crimes against others. In Latin they were known as the Furies. According to some myths they are children of Hades although Persephone is not labelled as their mother.

Hecate is an archaic goddess of the Underworld during the Titans' rule of the realms. According to myths she lives peacefully in Hades' dominion and is often involved in the myth "The Rape of Persephone"; according to some traditions she followed Persephone to the Underworld and to others she was the one to inform Demeter as to the location of her missing daughter.

Answer: False

Persephone is almost always referred to as Demeter's only child so this is kind of a trick question. While she is usually referred to in her abduction myth as being an only child, she did in fact have siblings, not only by her infamous father Zeus, but her mother had other children with Poseidon. According to mythology Demeter rejected the advances of Poseidon turning herself into a horse and hiding in a paddock with other horses to get away from him. Poseidon was not to be fooled by this disguise and turned himself into a horse when he impregnated her. One of the offspring of this union was a horse. Knowing that two of her brothers forced themselves on her it is understandable that she tried to keep her daughter away from the Olympian men.

Answer: Sicily

One of the myths surrounding her abduction is that a distraught Demeter changed the nymph companions of Persephone into the Sirens for not being able to rescue the maiden goddess from Hades' clutches.

Answer: No, never

Persephone is never recorded as having an affair although she clearly loved Adonis. Whether she loved him romantically or as a friend is not recorded but she felt strongly enough about him to fight with Aphrodite over rights to him.

Answer: Yes

According to the original Grecian myth, Hades never abducted Persephone. The two were very much in love and she went willingly with him. It wasn't until the Romans came along and adapted the myth that it changed to the version known today.

Answer: A box with Beauty in it

According to myth, Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche's beauty and sent her son Eros to make her fall in love with a hideous monster. Eros accidentally fell in love with the beautiful mortal and wed her. As the saying goes all good things come to an end and Psyche broke the one rule that Eros gave her.

She was never to see him. He left her and she was given tasks from Aphrodite. Some sources say it was as a penance while others say that it was to prove her worth to her mother-in-law and win her husband back. Persephone gave Psyche the Beauty in the box that Aphrodite was searching for telling her that she must never open the box.

But in good Greek fashion temptation proved too strong and she opened the box poisoning herself in the process. Eros, who had in the meantime forgiven her, found her and restored her to his side.

Answer: Yes, she was so moved by his music that Hades knowing the pain of the departure of his wife arranged for her return to the upper realms

Some sources say Persephone was on the Earth when Orpheus went down to the Underworld and that Orpheus appealed to the grieving god's mercy and pain to let him have his Eurydice back. Unfortunately he broke the terms made by Hades and Persephone and was never reunited with her back on Earth.

Answer: Spring

Her mother, Demeter, was the Goddess of the Harvest so many people immediately think that Persephone was but in fact she always was a seasonal Goddess even before her marriage. Interestingly enough in some obscure ancient texts Persephone is noted as a Goddess of the Underworld in her own right long before humans were created and is said to be an archaic goddess.

There is an obscure myth saying that Prometheus created humankind and then there was an argument over who would rule the race he had created. Eventually it was decided that Prometheus would rule over humans in life and Persephone would rule over them in death.

Answer: Zeus

Persephone like many deities is generally listed as a child of Zeus. Poseidon fathered some of Demeter's other children.

Answer: six pomegranate seeds

There are conflicting stories about the amount of seeds eaten by Persephone. Usually it is recorded as six, making her do, as said in the Disney movie "The Parent Trap" 'the six month split'. Other version document that she ate four seeds spending a third of the year with Hades, a third on Earth with her mother and a third on Olympus with her father.

Other versions state she ate two seeds and split the year into halves. There are different tales of how she got the pomegranate in the first place. One tale is Hades tricked her into eating to be healthy when meeting with her mother again.

Some say that a gardener tricked her into eating out of spite on another's behalf. Sometimes it is recorded as on Menthe's behalf the nymph that Persephone turned into a plant for having an affair with Hades.

Another is that Hades couldn't bear to lose her and disguised himself as a gardener who told her to eat so that she wouldn't be sickly when she went back to her mother.