sed fondling her daughter and asked of her at once: 'My child,
tell me, surely you have not tasted any food while you were below? Speak
out and hide nothing, but let us both know. For if you have not, you
shall come back from loathly Hades and live with me and your father, the
dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honoured by all the deathless gods;
but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret
places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every
year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless
gods. But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring
in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come
up once more to be a wonder for gods and mortal men. And now tell me how
he rapt you away to the realm of darkness and gloom, and by what trick
did the strong Host of Many beguile you?'

(ll. 405-433) Then beautiful Persephone answered her thus: 'Mother, I
will tell you all without error. When luck-bringing Hermes came, swift
messenger from my father the Son of Cronos and the other Sons of Heaven,
bidding me come back from Erebus that you might see me with your eyes
and so cease from your anger and fearful wrath against the gods, I
sprang up at once for joy; but he secretly put in my mouth sweet food,
a pomegranate seed, and forced me to taste against my will. Also I will
tell how he rapt me away by the deep plan of my father the Son of Cronos
and carried me off beneath the depths of the earth, and will relate
the whole matter as you ask. All we were playing in a lovely meadow,
Leucippe [2509] and Phaeno and Electra and Ianthe, Melita also and Iache
with Rhodea and Callirhoe and Melobosis and Tyche and Ocyrhoe, fair as
a flower, Chryseis, Ianeira, Acaste and Admete and Rhodope and Pluto
and charming Calypso; Styx too was there and Urania and lovely Galaxaura
with Pallas who rouses battles and Artemis delighting in arrows: we were
playing and gathering sweet flowers in our hands, soft crocuses mingled
with irises and hyacinths, and rose-blooms and lilies, marvellous to
see, and the narcissus which the wide earth caused to grow yellow as
a crocus. That I plucked in my joy; but the earth parted beneath, and
there the strong lord, the Host of Many, sprang forth and in his golden
chariot he bore me away, all unwilling, beneath the earth: then I cried
with a shrill cry. All this is true, sore though it grieves me to tell
the tale.'