In many re-tellings of the story of Persephone and Demeter, the focus often becomes Persephone. Brutally abducted by her uncle and swept into the Underworld where she was forced to be his bride, the story of Persephone is a tragic tale of lost innocence. Demeter had her own journey in this story too though, one in which she flirted with discarding her Goddess title as she searched in agony for her lost daughter.

Poor Persephone, an innocent maiden who was playing joyfully with her friends in a field full of flowers one moment, and in the next she mysteriously vanished, wrenched from the world without a trace:

He seized her against her will, put her on his golden chariot,
And drove away as she wept. She cried with a piercing voice,
calling upon her father [Zeus], the son of Kronos, the highest and the best.
But not one of…