One popular approach to understanding myth is to interpret myths as reflections of rites and ceremonies performed in honor of the divinity in question. This mode of interpretation is of limited value, for it would be difficult to explain all myths in this way. The myth of Demeter and Persephone as told in the Homeric Hymns, however, is an exception.

Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of the earth. Hades, the brother of Zeus and god of the underworld, abducts the young goddess one day as she is gathering flowers by a stream. Demeter goes in search of her daughter, but is unable to find her. Demeter’s grief causes the earth to die—crops fail, and famine comes upon the land. Zeus intervenes and commands Hades to return Persephone. Reluctant to release her, Hades forces Persephone to eat a pomegranate seed, food of the dead. As a result, she can spend only six months out of the year with her mother; the other six months she is destined to spend in the realm of Hades. To the Greeks, the return of Persephone from the underworld symbolized the return of life in the spring. Each spring, as the earth returned to life, some Greeks observed a sacred ritual in which the story of Demeter and Persephone was enacted.