Demeter was a Goddess who was in charge of the Seasons and Cereals (because eating Cornflakes is what makes man different from other animals) and a few other less-important things like marriage, life and death. The Romans called her Ceres - but there was only one of her and they soon got tired of hearing that joke. The Romans took over the Greek Gods lock, stock and barrel but they insisted on calling them by completely different names. As if that was going to fool anybody, right? She had daughter called Persephone (pronounced per-SEF-o-knee, not purse-phone) who went off with Hades - the bad guy, not the bad place, and I know that's confusing. They will fall for bad boys, won't they? She claimed that he abducted her while she was out picking flowers and then deflowered her. There are conflicting reports and in some of them witnesses said that they thought they heard her calling out "Rape!" However that was a Latin word that only meant "I don't want to go where you're going" and didn't have any sexual significance back then. www.etymonline.com Let's say Hades had a defence based on Plausible Denial and Reasonable Doubt. Hades was renamed Pluto by the Romans. He's annoyed with Disney for unauthorised usage of that name and he's suing them for misrepresentation and defamation of character. Remember that is has to be "Prosperina and Pluto" or "Persephone and Hades" because it's surprising how many artists mix up their Greek and Latin. You'd think they just wanted an excuse ...
Keywords: Demeter, Carol Ann Duffy, poem, poetry
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