This year’s cover shows Persephone. She was the daughter of the Greek goddess Demeter (the Roman Ceres), the goddess of fertility and grain growing.
The story is that Hades, the god of the underworld, saw her and wanted her but her mother protected her.
Persephone disappears
But one day Persephone was wandering in the countryside and saw a beautiful new flower, a wonderful blue colour. She stooped down to find out if it was scented, but it was a trap set by Hades, who sucked her down into his kingdom intending to keep her there.
Demeter was distraught. She searched everywhere for her daughter but nobody had seen her. Eventually she went to Zeus, and demanded he tell her where her daughter was. Zeus told her Persephone was to be queen of the underworld.
A mother’s revenge
Demeter was furious and withdrew her powers from the earth so that winter came and nothing would grow. People were starving.
Eventually Zeus relented. He said that Persephone could return to Demeter, provided she had not accepted any food while she was in the Underworld.
But Persephone fails the test
Unfortunately, although she was deeply unhappy at her imprisonment, Persephone had been intrigued by a fruit she had never seen. It was a Pomegranate. She had tried nibbling a few of its seeds.
Hades said she was now his forever, because she had eaten this, but Zeus could see that Demeter would not allow anything to grow until her daughter was returned.
Zeus ruled that Persephone could return to her mother, but because she had tried the Pomegranate, she could only stay for half the year. When the summer moons had passed, she would have to return to Hades.
How the seasons came to be
So she returned to the earth, and her mother let her powers flow out across the land, and Persephone became the goddess of Spring.
But as the sun’s power faded she was stolen away again to be Queen of the Underworld.