ow what had happened to
her daughter, and she wandered all over the earth seeking for her. At
last she found Proserpine's girdle on the surface of the waters of a
fountain where Pluto had struck his hole in the ground, and the nymph
Arethusa told her how her daughter had been stolen away. Full of
indignation, Ceres went to complain to Jupiter, who promised that
Proserpine should be restored if she had taken nothing to eat in the
realm of Hades. Unfortunately Proserpine, as she walked in the Elysian
fields, had gathered and eaten a pomegranate, which act constituted her
a subject of those regions. To pacify Ceres, Jupiter permitted that
Proserpine should spend six months of every year with Pluto in Hades,
and the other six months with her mother on earth. Each spring Ceres
went to the entrance of a great gloomy grotto to meet her daughter, and
with her return all the flowers bloomed on earth again. There is a very
celebrated picture by Sir Frederick Leighton, called 'The Return of
Persephone.' The artist has painted Ceres at the entrance of the grotto
with the sunshine behind her, holding out her arms to the lovely
daughter whom the god Mercury is bringing back to her out of the
darkness.

"The story is one of those old nature myths of which the Greeks were so
fond. The time Proserpine spent in Hades symbolized winter, when winds
blew cold, and few flowers bloomed, and her return symbolized the advent
of spring. It has a deeper meaning, also, to those who look for it,
because it is a type of the Resurrection, and shows that our dear ones
are not really taken from us, but will come again in more glorious life
and beauty. Many of the old Greek myths had this meaning hidden under
them, as if they were sent to prepare people for the truth that Christ
was to reveal more fully later on. Nearly all early religions began with
pure and beautiful conceptions of God, and then trailed down to earth,
because their followers were too ignorant to understand. The ancient
Egyptians believed in God, and said that one of His attributes was
strength. The strongest thing they knew was a bull, so they made
colossal statues of bulls in black marble, to show God's strength, but
the populace worshipped the statues instead of God himself, and became
idolaters. In the same way the ancient Greeks realized that Beauty was
part of God's scheme of work, and they came to worship Beauty quite
apart from Goodness, forgetting that the two must go together