Persephone was the beautiful daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Wherever she stepped, flowers would appear, and all of the animals would follow her to marvel at her beauty. Hades, the lord of the Underworld, was getting lonely and depressed in his gloomy domain. He gazed up to the earth, and he saw beautiful Persephone. He decided to have her. The god grabbed Persephone, put her in his chariot, and rode back to the underground before anyone could see him.
Demeter, Persephone’s mother and the goddess of harvest and agriculture, started wandering the Earth searching for her missing daughter. Finally, she found out it was Hades who captured her. Enraged, she decided to neglect her duties until her daughter was returned to her. All of the plants soon began to die. The goddess covered the world in snow, saying that the world shall be as barren as her heart. All of the other gods and goddesses pleaded Demeter to make the earth fertile once again, but she explained to them that she wouldn’t do anything until her daughter came back to her. Zeus, in fear of losing everything on earth to Demeter’s pain, ordered Hades to return Persephone. Hades finally agreed. Happy that she was soon going to see her mother again, Persephone, ravenously hungry by this time, ate 6 pomegranate seeds from the platter that Hades offered her. When Zeus and Demeter came to get the girl, Hades announced that she could not go, for she had eaten the food of the dead. Not wanting anything to get worse, Zeus made a compromise: Persephone would stay 6 months with Hades in the underworld, and 6 months with her mother on earth. This is the story explaining why there are seasons, with the year divided into 6 months of live and bloom and 6 months of winter and cold.