"If Proserpine has taken food in Pluto's realm, the Fates will not allow her to return to earth," he told Ceres. "But I will send my swift messenger, Mercury, with Spring to try and bring her home."
In all that time Proserpine had eaten none of the rich food that Pluto had set before her, only six seeds of a red pomegranate as she had pressed the fruit to her lips to quench her thirst. But Spring, with all her strength that can bring new leaves and blooms from dead branches, with the help of Mercury, the god of the winged shoes, brought Proserpine the long way back to her mother for six months. The remaining six months of the year, one month for each pomegranate seed that she had eaten, Proserpine was doomed to spend as queen of Pluto's kingdom of darkness.
No one, and particularly not her mother, worried very much, though, about those months of darkness because of the wonders that Proserpine brought when she returned to earth. Every tree that she touched with her garments burst into green, and wherever her feet pressed the earth the grass and wild flowers appeared and spread. Ploughing and planting were begun again, and the new shoots of the corn pushed up through the ground.
Indeed, it seemed to Ceres that her other child, the corn, was telling the story of lost Proserpine. The seed of the corn that is thrust into the earth and lies there, concealed in the dark, is like Proserpine carried off by the god of the underworld. Then Spring gives the seed a new form and it appears to bless the earth, just as Proserpine was led forth to her mother and to the light of day.
THE PLOUGHMAN WHO BROUGHT FAMINE.
Erisichthon had made up his mind to kill the Dryad who lived in the oak tree.
He was one of the strongest ploughmen in all Greece, and he knew Ceres who presided over the fields and her favorite Dryad of the oak tree very well. The oak tree had stood for centuries in a grove in which Ceres loved to rest, and it was almost a forest in itself. It overtopped the other trees as far as they stretched above the shrubs. Its trunk measured fifteen cubits around, and it was supported upon roots that were almost as strong as iron cables.