Who is persephone in the odyssey

Thank you! The beautiful daughter of Demeter and Zeus , Persephone is the focus of the story resulting in the division of the seasons, giving us the sweetness of Spring and the bitterness of Winter.

Hades did not woo the beautiful Persephone, he abducted her and took her to his underground kingdom. After much protest, Persephone came to love the cold blooded king of the underworld but her mother, Demeter, was consumed with rage and sorrow. They simply hoisted the sail, boated their oars and sat there; the wind did the rest. For one whole day they sailed to Ocean, the water that encircles the Earth, and as the sun set they made a journey across to its further shore.

On the banks of Ocean they found a dark pool, where three underworld rivers met, and dug a trench and made offerings to Hades and Persephone and filled the trench with sheep's blood, which, when drunk, would allow the dead temporarily to recover their senses somewhat, to remember and to speak.

First Persephone sent up Odysseus's mother, Anticlea, and she came to drink from the trench, but Odysseus drew his sword and kept her away, for Circe had warned him that Tiresias must drink first, if he was going to get anything out of him. Then Tiresias appeared and drank and told him of his future: "Your troubles are not over. You have a god against you whose dear son you blinded. You will have another god against you if you do not keep your hands off the cattle of Helios the sun god.

If you touch them, your homecoming will be delayed much longer than it has been already. You will come home alone and find your house full of scavenging suitors eating up your property while they compete for your wife Penelope's hand.

Tiresias now returned to the depths and other ghosts came to drink. Odysseus spoke with Anticlea and the ghosts of his fallen comrades of the Trojan war, and others he did not know were dead, including Agamemnon: "Great king, what are you doing here? Clytaemnestra killed me most treacherously when I was in the bath, putting her lover on my throne.

I have been looking for Iphigeneia ever since I came here, wishing to see her again and beg her forgiveness. But she is not among the dead. Odysseus was anxious to leave that terrible place, but before he left, Persephone opened up a window on the deepest parts of the underworld and Odysseus could see all those who suffered endless torments for impious crimes. Unity Syndicate. Origins Odyssey Valhalla. Valhalla: Song of Glory. Other media. Lineage Ascendance Embers. The Movie Live action series Animated series Anime series.

Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? View source. The second group, on the other hand, who had descended from the opening in the sky, told of the great happiness that they had felt and the sights of indescribable beauty that they had seen as they completed their cycle of one thousand years. The Choosing of a New Life. In this place, each soul had to pick a lot and choose from examples of lives before beginning the next cycle of mortality.

In front of these souls were placed the examples of every kind of life possible for human beings and for all living creatures. All-important was the choice that a soul would make; it must have learned from its experiences in life and in death to know the difference between the good life and the wicked, and always choose the better rather than the worse. Rebirth and Reincarnation. When all the souls had chosen their lives, whether wisely or foolishly, each was given a divine guardian spirit.

As they drank, they became forgetful of everything and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, amidst thunder and an earthquake, suddenly they were carried upward just like shooting stars, each in a different direction, to be reborn. Plato has a similar account of the afterlife in the Phaedo. He explains that true philosophers who have lived a holy life are eventually released from this cycle of reincarnation and entirely as souls inhabit beautiful dwellings.

In each of our lives in this world and in each of our periods of reward or punishment in the afterlife, we are supposed to learn and become wiser and proceed upward spiritually. The Platonic Afterlife. Plato is writing in the fourth century B. Not only do human beings have a body and a soul, but moral and religious philosophy has developed concepts of virtue and sin, which merit reward and punishment in the next life, and a theory of rebirth, reincarnation, and the transmigration of souls, all of which provide dogma for mystery religions.

The fullest account of the afterlife comes from Vergil, Book 6 of his Aeneid , written in the second half of the first century B. To do so, he must get a golden bough, which he finds with the aid of two doves sent by his mother, Venus. Aeneas and His Guide, the Sibyl. After appropriate sacrifices, Aeneas and the Sibyl enter the Underworld and reach the banks of the river that is its boundary. In an interview reminiscent of that between Odysseus and Elpenor in Homer, Palinurus receives assurances from Aeneas that his body will receive proper rites.

The Sibyl throws him a drugged sop, which he devours eagerly. One of these regions is called the Fields of Mourning. Tartarus Hell.