Persephone's Pomegranate: The Hymn Says One Seed, Not Six

One seed in the Hymn to Demeter

The Hymn opens with Persephone picking flowers in a meadow when the earth splits and Hades carries her off in his golden chariot (lines 1–20). Demeter withdraws in grief, and "the ground would not make the seed sprout" until famine threatens everyone (lines 305–311, in Evelyn-White's translation). Zeus sends Hermes to bring Persephone back to the light (lines 334–339). Hades lets her go, but first, in Evelyn-White's 1914 translation of lines 371–374:

"But he on his part secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, taking care for himself that she might not remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter."

Reunited, Demeter asks at once whether her daughter has eaten. If she has, she must "dwell a third part of the seasons every year" beneath the earth and spend the other two parts with her mother (lines 398–400). Persephone's own account adds what the narrator left out: Hades "secretly put in my mouth sweet food, a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will" (lines 411–413).

Both passages use the same Greek words, rhoiēs kokkon (ῥοιῆς κόκκον), "a pomegranate seed" in Evelyn-White's rendering, with the noun in the singular. By this page's count, they are the only two places the poem names the seed. Zeus's settlement repeats the share: "the third part of the circling year" below and "the two parts" above (lines 445–447).

The Hymn survives in a single manuscript, found at Moscow in 1777. Evelyn-White's 1914 list dates it to the 14th century; English Wikipedia, citing later studies, dates it to the first half of the 15th. Parts of lines 387–401 are lost and supplied by editors, but Zeus's terms at lines 445–447 are complete. The lost books of antiquity entry follows works that survive in no copy at all.

Counting seeds, version by version

Five texts give a count, and they do not agree. The table lists them in date order with the name each one uses. The Greek texts call her Persephone. Ovid's Metamorphoses mostly calls her Proserpina and his Fasti mostly Persephone, while Hawthorne keeps the Latin name.

Table data: persephone-pomegranate-seed-counts.csv, with the source and link for every row.

In the site's terms, this is motif drift: the versions differ at the same point in the story, and the table records the difference without claiming that one count grew out of another.

Apollodorus has Pluto give her "a seed of a pomegranate," in J. G. Frazer's 1921 translation, and sets her time below at a third of the year, as the Hymn does. Frazer's note on that passage lists Ovid's two poems, Hyginus (Fabulae 146), Servius on Virgil's Georgics and the Second Vatican Mythographer for the half-year version; Hyginus is not among the sources checked for this page.

On the seasons, the Hymn ties her yearly return to spring: she will come up "when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind" (lines 401–403). By this page's count, no word for winter appears in its Greek text, and "a most dreadful and cruel year" in the poem is one year of famine caused by Demeter's grief (lines 305–311).

Modern readings differ. English Wikipedia's Persephone article sets out two, citing Walter Burkert, Timothy Gantz and Martin Nilsson. In one, her months below are autumn and winter; in the other, they are the dry Greek summer, when grain sat in storage jars underground.

Ovid's seven seeds and the half-year

In Ovid's Metamorphoses the eating happens in a garden below. Proserpina, wandering there, picks a fruit from a tree and eats seven seeds; only Ascalaphus sees her, and she turns him into an owl for telling (book 5, lines 533–550). In Hugo Magnus's 1892 Latin text and Brookes More's 1922 translation:

Poeniceum curva decerpserat arbore pomum / sumptaque pallenti septem de cortice grana / presserat ore suo.

"While there she plucked the fruit by bending a pomegranate tree, and plucked, and chewed seven grains, picked from the pallid rind"

Jupiter then divides the year: in More's words, "for six months with her mother she abides, and six months with her husband" (lines 564–567). The Latin divides the year ex aequo, "equally," and gives her totidem … totidem, "as many … as many" months with each (Translation: Where Tales Began); More turns that into six and six.

The Fasti, Ovid's poem on the Roman calendar, tells the story again. The count differs. Mercury reports what she ate below, and Jupiter strikes a bargain (book 4, lines 607–608 and 613–614, in J. G. Frazer's 1931 Latin text):

rapta tribus dixit ‘solvit ieiunia granis, / Punica quae lento cortice poma tegunt.’

"The girl who was carried off," he said, "broke her fast with three seeds, which pomegranates keep under a tough rind." (Translation: Where Tales Began)

et factura fuit, pactus nisi Iuppiter esset, / bis tribus ut caelo mensibus illa foret.

"And she would have done it, had Jupiter not agreed that the girl should be in heaven for twice three months." (Translation: Where Tales Began)

The "she" is Ceres, the Roman Demeter, who had just said that heaven was no place for her either (lines 611–612). By this page's count, the Fasti calls the daughter Persephone in five lines and Proserpina in one (587).

Where the six seeds come from

Six seeds appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales (1853), a book of Greek myths retold for children, in the chapter "The Pomegranate Seeds." Hawthorne's Proserpina is a little girl. She has eaten nothing in Pluto's palace for six months. His servant can find only "a single pomegranate, and that so dried up as not to be worth eating," because Mother Ceres has stopped the fruit from growing.

Proserpina bites it almost before she knows it. Back with her mother, she confesses that "six of the pomegranate seeds, I am afraid, remained in my mouth." Ceres answers: "For each of those six pomegranate seeds you must spend one month of every year in King Pluto's palace."

None of the four ancient texts in the table links the months below to the number of seeds. Each ties them to the fact that she ate. English Wikipedia's Persephone article says that in some versions she spends six months below for six seeds, citing modern studies rather than an ancient text. Of the sources checked for this page, all listed under Sources below, Hawthorne's 1853 chapter is the only dated text with six seeds; an older six-seed text, if there is one, lies outside that range.

Food of the dead elsewhere

A goddess who has eaten in the land of the dead also appears in the Japanese Kojiki, which Basil Hall Chamberlain's 1882 translation says was completed in AD 712. When her husband Izanagi follows Izanami into the Land of Hades and asks her to come back, she answers: "Lamentable indeed that thou camest not sooner! I have eaten of the furnace of Hades." Chamberlain's note glosses the phrase as eating "of the food of Hades," reading the written character as a word for a place for cooking.

Izanami says she wishes to return and will discuss it with the Deities of Hades, but tells him not to look at her. He looks, flees, and blocks the pass to Hades with a rock (Sect. IX). The full story, and how the Nihon Shoki tells it, is in the Izanami entry.

This entry sets Persephone and Izanami side by side as two records of the same plot point, with no claim that either story borrowed from the other. Chamberlain's own introduction calls Izanagi "Orpheus-like" and does not mention Persephone. J. G. Frazer's 1921 note to Apollodorus gathers rules against eating in the world of the dead from ancient Egypt, New Caledonia, Melanesia and New Zealand, and against fairy food in the Scottish Highlands. For each, the note names a source published between 1856 and 1900.