We’re taking a break from Hercules for a very special guest post from author Molly Ringle. She wrote her own version of the Persephone myth in a book called Persephone’s Orchard (wordpress won’t let me underline for some reason so lets see if italics works). I’ll include her version of the myth first, then a bit about the book. Tune in Thursday for a review of Persephone’s Orchard

Molly Ringle’s Version of Persephone:

There is no single “original” myth for Persephone and Hades, nor for most of the other myths. We have a variety of surviving sources, often with varying and conflicting details. What I’ll tell here draws from various versions, though predominantly from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one of the earlier sources we know about.

One day Hades, the lonesome and grim god of the Underworld, caught sight of Persephone, a goddess of spring and daughter of the gods Demeter and Zeus, and fell promptly in love with her. Deciding he must have her, he dispensed with the usual introductions, and abducted her from the field where she was picking flowers. He caused the earth to split open, and dragged her down into its depths in his chariot pulled by black horses. The chasm then closed again, and Persephone officially became a missing person in the world above.

Her mother Demeter went wild with grief at the disappearance of her daughter, and while racing around looking for her, dropped her duties of making the Earth fertile and healthy. The weather went cold; the land went barren; people began to starve. This was, apparently, the first instance of winter. And no one liked it. So once Zeus figured out where Persephone had disappeared to, he insisted upon her return, for otherwise Demeter would refuse to save the Earth, and humanity would freeze and starve to death.

Persephone was happy to see the messenger Hermes come to the Underworld to summon her back, but it turned out her return to the surface would only be temporary. She had eaten a pomegranate seed from the land of the dead (the Homeric Hymn says Hades slipped it straight into her mouth, sneakily), and was therefore obliged to return to the Underworld for part of every year. She honors this obligation, and this is why winter, too, returns to Earth each year.

Queen of the Underworld

It’s a horrible thing, a woman being kidnapped and trapped into a marriage in the land of the dead. We can all agree on that. What has always interested me, though, is how it doesn’t resemble the average kidnapping. Hades doesn’t tie Persephone up and throw her in a closet and abuse her. Quite the contrary. Instead, he gives her new powers. He makes her queen of the realm. He tells her she can punish anyone who doesn’t properly worship her, in any way she sees fit. And he asks her, please, to think of him kindly, and to consider that he’s not such a bad guy as husbands go.

It all still sounds a bit psychotic from our modern point of view, but nonetheless, in his possibly twisted way, he loves her, and honestly wants her to love him. That’s the point that has stuck with me all these years, and made me (like hundreds of other writers) come up with a version of the story that gives their relationship a fair chance at happiness.

My changes to the myth

My story, Persephone’s Orchard, uses somewhat less magic than the old myths, in which the gods can do virtually anything they wish by a wave of the hand. I love the myths, but I find it easier to plot stories where magic is limited and can’t solve everything, so I tempered the magic to a few key abilities and places. The Underworld is certainly a place of magic, where even the plants growing there (for example, pomegranate trees) exhibit properties that their living-world counterparts do not. But my immortals are nearly regular humans in most ways, other than exhibiting unusual strength and longevity. As with vampires, you can kill them if you try really hard, so they do have to be on the lookout for anti-immortal vigilantes. (But, unlike most vampires, the gods in my story are warm to the touch. And, no, they don’t sparkle. Unless they’re wearing lots of those beautiful Underworld gemstones.)

But perhaps the most important change I made, as hinted at already, was to remove the majority of the non-consensual portions of the myth of Persephone and Hades. Instead I have a Hades less prone to kidnapping, and a Persephone who’s actively curious about that dark and forbidden place called the Underworld, and who chooses to visit there, against her mother’s wishes. And that which is forbidden is always so much more tempting.

About her Book:

The Greek gods never actually existed. Did they? Sophie Darrow finds she was wrong about that assumption when she’s pulled into the spirit realm, complete with an Underworld, on her first day at college. Adrian, the mysterious young man who brought her there, simply wants her to taste a pomegranate. Soon, though she returns to her regular life, her mind begins exploding with dreams and memories of ancient times; of a love between two Greeks named Persephone and Hades. But lethal danger has always surrounded the immortals, and now that she’s tainted with the Underworld’s magic, that danger is drawing closer to Sophie.

* * *
Molly Ringle has been writing fiction for over twenty years. With her intense devotion to silly humor, she was especially proud to win the grand prize in the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with one (intentionally) terrible sentence. Molly grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and lives in Seattle with her husband and children. Her studies include a bachelor of arts in anthropology and a master of arts in linguistics. She was a Tri-Delta in college, in an old sorority house that was supposedly haunted, which inspired some of the central ideas for The Ghost Downstairs. She also loves folklore and mythology, and is working on new novels about the Greek myths. Persephone’s Orchard is the first in the series. When not writing, she can often be found experimenting with fragrances, chocolate, and gardening.

Website: http://mollyringle.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MollyRingle
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2905269.Molly_Ringle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mollyringle
Blog: http://lemonlye.livejournal.com/

The seventh labor of Hercules was to capture the Cretan Bull. The Cretan Bull was in some versions of the myths, the parent of the minotaur discussed in Minos’ Mythology Monday a few weeks ago. That whole myth may just be an early version of the Zeus /Europa myth, but that’s another story.

Anyway, Minos wanted to get rid of the bull that seduced his wife, so he sent for Hercules. Minos offered to help, but Hercules declined in favor of sneaking up on the bull and strangling it into unconsciousness with his bare hands. He shipped the bull back to his king, who wanted to sacrifice it to Hera, but Hera didn’t want anything Hercules killed, so it as set free to roam in Marathon. Theseus (he’s popped up in a few of our myths so far, and we’ll learn more about him later) later killed it and sacrificed it to either Apollo or Athena depending on who told the myth.

The eighth labor of Hercules was to steal the Mares of Thrace (or Diomedes, but I prefer Thrace because of Gattlestar Gallactica), four man-eating horses that belonged to Diomedes, King of Thrace and son of Ares. Also, he was a giant.

Fun fact, Alexander the Great traced his horses lineage back to one of these horses.

The horses had names: Podagros (the fast), Lampon (the shining), Xanthos (the blond) and Deimos (the terrible). They were tied up to a bronze manger and were insane thanks to their diet of human flesh. They also may have breathed fire. In some versions of the myths, Hercules brought a few boys with him to keep the horses occupied while Hercules dealt with the giant. Some versions had only one boy, Abderus, some versions had no boys. The boys that may or may not have come were eaten in the versions of the myths they took part in. Hercules got pissed, and fed Diomedes to the horses.

Eating made the horses calmer, so Hercules bound their mouths shut and shipped them back to his king, who dedicated them to Hera, or Zeus, or set them free, or sacrificed them. Sorry for all the maybes, but there are a TON of Herculean myths to wade through. Either way, the horses descendants were used in the Trojan war.

The ninth labor was by far the most offensive. Hercules had to steal Hippolyta’s girdle. Hippolyta was the Queen of the Amazons, and a daughter of Ares. There are two versions of this myth, one with Hercules alone, and the other with Theseus.

Okay, for Herc alone, Hippolyta was so impressed with him that she gave him the girdle, and went to visit him on his ship. Hera disguised herself as an amazon and got the others all riled up and convinced that Herc was abducting their queen so they attacked, were defeated, and Herc gave the girdle to his kings daughter.

Her and Theseus went down almost the same, except that Theseus may have actually been trying to abduct her or she might have been going with him willingly, setting aside her throne for her love. They got married, and Theseus left her for a chick named Phaedra (some versions of the myth have Phaedra not coming about until after Hippolyta’s death). Hippolyta stormed the wedding and attacked and was killed. But maybe it was actually not her at all, but her sister, as some of the myths claim.

Either way, Hippolyta pops up in Chaucer’s “A Knight’s Tale,” AND Shakespeare’s

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

married to Theseus.

Hercules is getting just a few more mythology Monday’s, he has many adventures to come. Then I promise, the Hercules show will be over and I’ll move on to other myths.

Hercules’ next labor was to capture the Erymanthian Boar. The boar was a huge, violent creature that roamed the mountains and depending on the myth was responsible for the death of Adonis. Hercules traveled to the mountains, and on the way got a group of centaurs drunk. Things got out of hand, as drunken parties so often do, and Hercules ended up having to kill them all with his poisoned arrows.

One centaur, Chiron, could’t die because he was immortal. But the poisoned arrows still hurt, so in exchange for the pain of the arrows, he took Prometheus’ place as snack for the golden eagle. Herc killed the eagle with his arrows, so Chiron told him to trap the boar in a snow drift. It worked, and the boars tusks were put on display at a shrine of Apollo.

The next labor was simpler. Clean the Augean Stables in a day. Augeas was the King of Eliis, and he had more cattle than anyone in the whole word, but had NEVER cleaned his stables (30 years old, over 1,000 cattle, gross). That was bad, because in addition to being numerous, the cattle were also divinely heathy so they created a lot of manure. Herc was promised ten percent of the cattle if he succeeded.

Her rerouted two rivers and blasted the stables clean. Augeas didn’t deliver 10% of the cattle, so Herc killed him. But because the rivers did the work, and because he was paid, this labor was thrown out, which is part of the reason ten labors became 12.

Instead, Herc was sent to defeat the Stymphalian birds. These were man-eating birds with bronze beaks and sharp metallic feathers. They were also Ares’ pets. Even their poop was highly toxic. They had recently moved to a swamp in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves, and were troubling a nearby town.

But the birds lived in a swamp. How could Herc get to them without sinking? Athena gave him a noisemaker he shook to frighten all the birds into the air, where they were shot at with…. you guessed it, poisoned arrows. They flew far away and became Jason’s problem, but that’s another story.

Mad with grief, Hercules took the Oracle of Delphi’s advice to perform 10 impossible tasks for King Eurysteus. He was tricked into doing the last two. In return for completing the labors, his sins would be forgiven and he would be granted immortality.

*side note: most of the monsters in these myths were the children of the Titans Typhon and Echidna)

The first task (order varies depending on who writes the myth) was to slay the Nemean Lion. It had golden super-fur/body armor that could not be cut with any weapon. It also had claws sharp enough to shred metal. Sometimes the lion could shape shift into a beautiful woman and would feign injury, drawing in the would be heroes and then shifting into a lion and killing them.

Hercules blocked the exit of the lion’s cave and then either strangled the lion, or shot it with in an arrow in its mouth. He ran into a problem when he tried to skin the lion because nothing could cut its fur. Finally, Athena took pity on him and pointed out the lions claws were rather sharp, so Hercules used them to skin the lion.

This skin became his cloak/armor.

Next, Hercules sent to kill the hydra. You guys know this one, it had nine (or three, or a thousand) heads and every time you chopped off one, three (or two) more grew in its place. Remember, myths varied by who told them (hence the parenthesis). The hydra’s breath and blood were poisonous and the reptilian creature lived in a lake that sat above an entrance to the Underworld.

Hercules shot flaming arrows at the creature, but that just pissed it off. He may or may not have beat it with his club, stabbed it with his sword, or cut off several heads with a sickle. Whatever weapon he used, it soon became apparent that more heads grew every time he chopped one off. Unfortunately, the hydra couldn’t die so long as it had one head.

Hercules may have asked Iolaus or Athena for aid, and came up with the brilliant idea of cauterizing the wounds before more heads could grow. He either used fire or the creatures own blood dipped on his sword to cauterize the wound. Then he used the creatures blood to turn all his cool weapons into cool poisonous weapons.

Sadly, in killing the hydra, Hercules rendered that river uninhabitable. All the fish died and the nearby villagers either starved or moved.

The last labor I’m covering today was for Hercules to obtain a doe belonging to Artemis. It had golden antlers and bronze and brass hooves. It could outrun even the swiftest of arrows. Hercules chased it across Greece for a full year. Eventually he trapped it a. while it was sleeping, b. with a net, or c. with an arrow shot between its legs, tripping it. He apologized to Artemis and promised to return the doe once he showed it to the King. Artemis didn’t hold a grudge, ruining Hera’s plot to anger the goddess.

When Hercules showed the deer to the King, he wanted to add it to his collection of woodland creatures, but he was unable to keep up with the deer, so it escaped and returned to Artemis.

Over the next few weeks we’ll cover the rest of Hercules’ labors and other tasks. I promise we will get back to general mythology soon.