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- Demeter fell in love with the child and decided to make him immortal. So each night, after the family was asleep, Demeter lathered the boy with ambrosia, an ointment of the gods. When he was well oiled, she placed him in the heart of the hearth’s fire to burn away all traces of his mortality.One day, the child's mother walked in while Demeter was attempting to make him immortal. She screamed. Though Demeter was furious with Metanira for the interruption, her anger quickly turned to sadness. She decided not to punish the family for their reaction. She had, after all, loved the baby, and although he could never become immortal without continuing the ambrosia treatments, he could still be honored, since a goddess had been his nurse.
- Demeter told the king and queen to have the people of Eleusis build a temple in herhonor. While it was being built, she told the townspeople how to grow corn and how to perform special ceremonies at her temple. In this way, the town continued to appease and pay tribute to the inconsolable goddess, whose grief once again became focused on her lost daughter. When the temple at Eleusis was completed, Demeter went to live there, far from Mount Olympus and the other gods and goddesses. Sadly, she sat silently in her temple for an entire year. While she sat, no crops grew, and the people became hungrier with every passing day. Soon it seemed like every living thing on earth was in danger of starving.
- Zeus feared that Demeter’s mourning was becoming destructive. He begged her to end the famine, but Demeter repeatedly refused the request. She said she would never grant her life-giving power to the earth so long as Persephone remained so far away in the Under-world. Finally, Zeus realized that Hades would have to give up his bride so that the world could be healed.
- With a heavy heart, Zeus sent Hermes, the official messenger of the gods, to the Underworld to deliver a message to Hades. When Hermes reached the Underworld, he found Hades and his bride sitting side by side on their thrones. Persephone looked miserable. She was weeping because she missed her mother and the world above.When she heard Hermes’s message from Zeus,she cried out in joy.
- Reluctantly, Hades prepared to let Persephone go, but before she left, he gave her four pomegranate seeds to eat. Hades knew, although his wife did not, that if she ate anything from the world of the dead, she would have to return to his kingdom someday. Having eaten the seeds, Persephone rode happily out of the Underworld with Hermes. When their chariot finally reached Eleusis, Persephone joyfully embraced her mother. The mother and daughter laughed and cried, and talked as they had before. Finally, Demeter asked her daughter if she had eaten anything during her stay in the Underworld. Persephone replied, “Mother, what a strange question. All I ate was four pomegranate seeds. Why should that matter?”
- Demeter became so upset by this news that she took her daughter directly to Zeus to discuss what could be done. On the way to Mount Olympus, Demeter explained to Persephone that because she had eaten food from the Underworld—the seeds of the pomegranate—she would have to return there. That rule was unbreakable. Zeus had witnessed the happiness of mother and daughter when they were reunited, and now he could see the unbearable sadness in their eyes at the thought of having to part again. Nevertheless, Zeus had to respect the rules of the universe. Therefore, to follow the rules, the king of the gods decreed that Persephone must return to the Underworld.
- However, Zeus offered a compromise: instead of returning permanently to live in the Underworld, Persephone need only live there for four months out of the year, one month for each pomegranate seed she had eaten. Appeased by Zeus’s compromise, Demeter allowed the crops on earth to grow again. From that time on, mother and daughter spent two thirds of the year together. During their time together, the earth bloomed and the crops flourished. But when Persephone returned each year to spend four months with Hades in the Underworld, the earth became as cold as ice while Demeter mourned for her daughter’s lost company. Then, every spring, when Persephone returned to her mother, the world would become green again in celebration of their joyous reunion.
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