PROSERPINA, daughter of Ceres, wife of Pluto, and queen of the underworld. Pluto was only able to marry her by abducting her from her mother Ceres.

The Sicilians celebrated the abduction of Proserpina every year with a festival around the time of the harvest, and Ceres’ search for her daughter during the planting season. This festival lasted ten full days and preparations were extravagant; but otherwise, according to Diodorus, the assembled people pretended to comply with the simplicity of antiquity. It is said that Jupiter, in the shape of a dragon, had intercourse with his own daughter, Proserpina ; thus, in the Sabasian Mysteries, a snake would slide over the breast of the initiates.

Proserpina was the principal deity of Sardis. A coin, which appears to have been struck during the reign of Gordian Pius, has the profile of a woman with a crown of towers inscribed with the word ϹΑΡΔΙϹ [Sardis];  [1] and on the reverse, the figure of Proserpina . We see the same goddess represented on a coin from the collection of Mr. Pellerin, inscribed with ϹΑΡΔΙΑΝΩΝ Β. ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ [Twice serving as temple warden for the people of Sardis]; on the other side, a veiled goddess crowned with towers, with the name ϹΑΡΔΙϹ [Sardis]. The head of Proserpina without inscription appears on two coins in the Royal Collection and on the reverse a club in a wreath of oak leaves with the words ϹΑΡΔΙΑΝΩΝ [Sardinian]. The abduction of this goddess by Pluto appears on several other coins. Finally, the coins struck under the Antonin Dynasty, in recognition of the omonoia [Peace treaty] with the city of Ephesus, show Proserpina on one side and Diana of the Ephesians on the other.

The kopaia [In honor of Kore] Games,  [2] celebrated in Sardis in honor of their city’s principal goddess, are marked on two very rare coins in the collection of Mr. Pellerin, struck during the rule of Caracalla. They display, on one side, the emperor’s head crowned with laurel with the inscription ΑΥΤ. Κ. Μ. ΑΥΡ. ϹΕ. .... ΑΝΤΟΝΕΙΝΟϹ [Autokrator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus];  [3] on the reverse Proserpina sits with a poppy on her right and a sheaf of wheat on her left, inscribed ΕΠΙ ΑΝ. ΡΟΥΦΟΥ ΑΡΧ. Α. ΤΟ. Γ .. [When Annius Rufus was archon for the third time] in the background; ΚΟΡΑΙΑ. ΑΚΤΙΑ [The Actia Koraia]  [4] on a base, and underneath, ϹΑΡΔΙΑΝΩΝ ΔΙϹ ΝΕΩΚΟΡΩΝ [Twice serving as the temple warden for the people of Sardis].

The festivals of Proserpina were called ΚΟΡΕΙΑ [In honor of Kore] by the school of Pindar, by Plutarch, and by Hesychius; Meursius cites their testimonials. The Sardinians celebrated the Actium Games, ΚΟΡΑΙΑ ΑΚΤΙΑ [The Actia Koraia], in honor of Proserpina .

In sacrifices offered to this goddess, black cows were always burned to her; the poppy was her symbol. The Gauls regarded Proserpina as their mother, and built temples to her. Claudius, a Latin Poet, who lived during the empire of Theodosius, wrote a poem about the rape of Proserpina .

We know that most mythologists believe the abduction myth to be have been an agricultural allegory. According to it, Proserpina is the power in the seeds buried in the ground; Pluto is the sun that makes its way under the Earth at winter solstice. The grain sewn into the bowels of the Earth and which, after six months, underground, returns above ground, is Proserpina who lives six months above ground and six months in the underworld. Ancient historians believed that Proserpina , daughter of Ceres, Queen of Sicily, was truly abducted by Pluto or Aidone, King of Epirus, because her mother had refused to give her to him.

Furthermore, the people believed that no one could die unless Proserpina herself, or the ministry of Atropos, cut a certain strand of hair on which men’s lives depended. Thus Dido, in Virgil, after stabbing herself in the chest, could not die, because Proserpina had not yet cut the fatal hair and had not yet condemned her to the underworld.

1. Thanks to Diane Rayor and William Morison of Grand Valley State University for their assistance with translations from Greek in brackets.

2. “Kore” was Proserpina’s title.

3. Titles of the Emperor known as Caracalla.

4. The Akita Koraia were games modeled on games first created by the emperor Augustus at Actium, but celebrated at Sardis for Proserpina.

5. “Proserpine had not yet taken a lock of golden hair from her head, or condemned her soul to Stygian Orcus.” Virgil, Aeneid, bk. IV, l. 698-699. Trans. A. S. Kline.