Proserpina

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (November 2008)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

Proserpine, 1873-1877, at Tate Gallery, London. Painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Porwanie Prozerpiny by Augustyn Schöps, the fountain in Poznań, Poland.

Rape of Proserpina, by Luca Giordano

This copy of Vincenzo de'Rossi's "The Rape of Proserpina" on a pedestal in the ring of the parterre faces the Garden Front of Cliveden House

Proserpina (sometimes spelt Proserpine, Prosperine or Prosperina) is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone^[1]. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain^[2]. Proserpina was subsumed by the cult of Libera^[3], an ancient fertility goddess, wife of Liber and is also considered a life–death–rebirth deity.

She was the daughter of Ceres, goddess of agriculture and crops^[4] and Jupiter, the god of sky and thunder.

Myths

Myth of a Springtime

Venus, in order to bring love to Pluto, sent her son Amor also known as Cupid to hit Pluto with one of his arrows. Proserpina was in Sicily (an island outside of Italy), at the Pergusa Lake near Enna, where she was playing with some nymphs and collecting flowers, when Pluto came out from the volcano Etna with four black horses named Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus and Alastor^[5]. He abducted her in order to marry her and live with her in Hades, the Greco-Roman Underworld, of which he was the ruler. Notably, Pluto was also her uncle, being Jupiter's (and Ceres's) brother. She is therefore Queen of the Underworld.

Her mother Ceres, the goddess of agriculture or of the Earth, went looking for her in vain to every corner of the earth, but wasn't able to find anything but a small belt that was floating upon a little lake (made with the tears of the nymphs). In her desperation Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, bestowing a malediction on Sicily. Ceres refused to go back to Mount Olympus and started walking on the Earth, making a desert at every step.

Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto (Jupiter's brother) to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds, because those who have eaten the food of the dead could not return to the world of the living. This meant that she would have to live six months of each year with him, and stay the rest with her mother. This story was undoubtedly meant to illustrate the changing of the seasons; When Ceres welcomes her daughter back in the spring the earth blossoms, and when Proserpina must be returned to her husband it withers.

In another version of the story, some people believe that upon her abduction, Proserpina ate only four pomegranate seeds, and she did so of her own accord. When Jupiter ordered her return, Pluto struck a deal with Jupiter, saying that since she had stolen his pomegranate seeds, she must stay with him four months of the year in return. For this reason, in spring when Ceres received her daughter back, the crops blossomed, and in summer they flourished. In the autumn Ceres changed the leaves to shades of brown and orange (her favorite colors) as a gift to Proserpina before she had to return to the underworld. During the time that Proserpina resided with Pluto, the world went through winter, a time when the earth was barren.

Orpheus and Eurydice

The myth of Proserpina, the most extensive Latin version of which is by Claudian (4th century AD, available), is closely connected with that of Orpheus and Eurydice — it is Proserpina, in Virgil's writings, as Queen of Hades, who allows Orpheus to enter and bring back to life his wife Eurydice who is dead by snake poison^[6]. Proserpina played her cetra to quiet Cerberus, but Orpheus did not respect her order never to look back, and Eurydice was lost.

Art featuring Proserpina

Proserpina's figure inspired many artistic compositions, eminently in sculpture (Bernini [1]), in painting (D.G.Rossetti [2], Pomarancio [3], J.Heintz [4], P.P.Rubens [5], A.Durer [6], Dell'Abbate [7], M.Parrish [8]) and in literature (Goethe [9] and Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine)

Proserpina in astronomy

Proserpina is a Main belt asteroid 95.1km in diameter, which was discovered by R. Luther in1853.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Persephone

• Pluto (mythology)
• Anthesphoria, festival honoring Proserpina

References

1. ^ http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess_persephone.htm
2. ^ http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/proserpina.html
3. ^ http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000464/
4. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Proserpina Daughter of Ceres
5. ^ http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Claudian/De_Raptu_Proserpinae/1*.html P315
6. ^ http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/lovers.html#Orpheus Orpheus and Eurydice

Further reading

• John Ruskin (1886). Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers while the Air was Yet Pure among the Alps and in the Scotland and England Which My Father Knew.

External links

• Claudian, De raptu Proserpinae ("The Rape of Proserpine"), three books, in Latin and English, Bill Thayer's edition of the Loeb Classical Library text at LacusCurtius
• The Pomegranate Seeds adapted as a children's tale by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Tanglewood Tales