The earth began to dry, harvests began to fail, plants withered, and animals died because of the lack of food, famine spread across the earth. She roamed the earth for days on end, searching and not fulfilling her duties as goddess of the harvest and fertility. Demeter was driven mad by her daughter’s disappearance. It was when the river Sion washed up the bells of Persephone that Demeter knew something dreadful had happened to her daughter. Furious that they were unable to protect her daughter, she cursed them with plumed bodies, scaly feet and wings they would now be called The Sirens. When she asked the Nymphs that she had left to watch over her daughter, they had no answer. When Demeter returned, her daughter was nowhere to be found. Upon seeing her friend descend deep into the underworld, she began to cry until she melted into a pool of her own tears form in the river Sion. The nymph Sion had seen the abduction, and she attempted to rescue Persephone, but she was no match for Hades. He grabbed Persephone before she was able to scream for help. From that chasm emerged Hades and his chariot of black horses. When she stooped down to pick the flower, the earth beneath her began to quake, and a gaping chasm soon appeared. Wandering into the garden alone, Persephone saw the narcissus flower and was immediately drawn to its beauty. Knowing that the nymphs would never let Persephone out of their sight, for fear of Demeter’s wrath, Zeus had Gaia plant a narcissus flower in a nearby garden. A study published in 2014 in the journal Violence and Gender reported that 32% of American college-aged men admitted they would rape if they could get away with it.Ĭase in point, Zeus helped his brother, Hades, abduct Persephone (the Roman Proserpina) to the underworld, and the road home remained complex for the young goddess of spring.The next morning, Demeter and her daughter descended upon the earth, and Persephone was left with the nymphs of the sea as her guides and Watchers while her mother tended to the earth. Such violent acts and intentions aren't always carried out by a single perpetrator sometimes there are encouragers – today we would call them 'enablers'. Art history tells us we should go back to the legends of ancient Greece, in which rape and predatory sexual behaviour are commonplace, and therefore, normalised. Yet, where rape culture is clearly a shocking concept to wrap one's head around, it's the subversion of long-held beliefs about romance (or what the Greeks called 'eros' – sexual love) that can alter our understanding of the world around us. Considering the latter, imagine a god (in place of a man) holding a thunderbolt as opposed to, say, a basketball.Īntonio Canova (1757–1822) (after) National Trust, Knole He may show up as the stereotypical lurcher of small screen horrors, or as a swaggering macho-type. The perpetrator's backstory is not always one we could predict, nor does he have a single image. In truth, this is an issue as old as time itself. Findings such as these may seem novel on the radar of the collective conscience, as it's only relatively recently that the question of unwanted sexual behaviour has been raised as a serious question. In a report published in January 2019, Brook, the well-being charity aimed at young adults, found that 56% of university students said they'd experienced unwanted sexual behaviour but only 3% of them reported it to the authorities. By definition, eros is about passionate, physical desire, which often emerges as a theme in its myths, epics and legends. One might argue that the legends of Greek mythology have underpinned or influenced historic attitudes towards sex, love, and relationships. Louis-Simon Boizot (1743–1809) (after) National Museums Scotland
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