Chapter Text
God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?
- The Epicurean Paradox -
Why don’t you do it, Persephone? Why don’t you take away all the evils?
You who are divine; you who are the most merciful and earthly in all of your kind; you who are willing and maybe even able: why don’t you make all mortals happy?
Chuckling bitterly, the Goddess of flowering often asked herself this question. Because she really wanted to: she wanted to make the whole world blossom instantly and dispel the drought; she wanted so much to clean the rivers and the oceans with a snap of her fingers; she wanted to save all the animals and all the dying children, but... there was always a but, from whatever perspective she looked.
But if you deprive the Egyptian Gods of the desert, they will be furious with you.
But if you clean the waters for them, mortals will never learn not to pollute them.
But if you steal souls from the Underworld, to which they are destined, you will have to come to terms with the Inexorable.
Ever since Persephone was just a child, jumping in the meadows, everyone kept telling her those warnings; implying that yes, she was indeed almighty, but almost nothing depended on her decisions. In a universe so crowded with deities, there were ancient and more powerful Gods to whom to submit, there were treaties of non-interference between the various Pantheons, and then there was the so-called greater good in which her mother Demeter believed, and she was always very careful to teach lessons to humanity with the help of both the carrot and the stick.
So, Persephone could do almost nothing. Her place in the world, both earthly and divine, had been carved out too late, in the last years of the 20th century. A twenty-three-year-old Goddess, in the eyes of the older ones, was barely an embryo. She was an idea, and not in the positive way Plato meant: Persephone was a rarefied concept, barely tangible, who wasn’t allowed to Symposia, who hadn’t the slightest right to discuss about hers or others’ Mysteries; all in all, it was better for her to just keep jumping around in the fields, thank you very much.
Was Persephone suffering from all this?
Yes. No. Maybe a little.
She tried not to take it too personally. She had to wait the right time, she kept repeating herself. She had to be patient, just grow a couple thousand years, then maybe they would start taking her into consideration.
Meanwhile, Persephone was fulfilled with the small satisfactions of a small life, more similar to that of a mortal than that of a Goddess. She liked sunbathing on the terrace of her house, in the countryside around Rome[1]; she liked to postpone the alarm clock on her mobile phone ten times, only to get up late and quickly; she liked to wear colorful patterned clothes and eat vegetarian tortillas; she liked to cook, she liked to read, she liked swimming in public pools; but above all, she liked to study in mortal universities, ask herself metaphysical mortal questions and, ultimately, behave like a mortal. And, thus, all the almightiness she had and which Epicurus praised was limited to some potted plants in her room, and to a garden particularly envied by neighbors during summer.
Persephone. The Goddess of Green Thumb.
Only sometimes she allowed herself to bask in the thought of her own uselessness, like that morning in late September, lying on the bed with her eyes wide open to the monotonous ceiling, counting the cracks.
She sighed disconsolately. She thought she should get up, put on something, but then she glanced at the pile of messy clothes on the desk chair, and could only sigh again. If Hera, Goddess of the Goddesses of their Pantheon, had seen that mess, she would’ve dispossessed Persephone of her immortality.
At that very moment, Persephone’s mother passed through the corridor, out of the room. She was looking for something, because she stuttered an indistinct question about a pair of shoes. Then she came back, passed in front of the open door again and stuck her head in, lowering herself under the lintel. “Kore! Have you seen my yellow heels? Those with the spikes of wheat!”
Persephone shrugged, smiling. “Certainly, I didn’t take them, since your foot size is forty-seven.”
Demeter, the tall and gigantic harvest Goddess, rolled her eyes and shook her head. She had never approved of sarcasm. It didn’t suit a fertility Goddess, according to her. “Kore, I don’t feel like playing, come on.”
“Get help from Hermes. He’s also the God of those who seek lost things, isn’t he?”
“Or stolen things.” Demeter insinuated, narrowing her golden eyes in the direction of her daughter.
Persephone finally got up from the bed, laughing cheerfully. She bent down and pulled her mother’s yellow heels from under the desk. Demeter, with an exaggerated sigh of relief, rushed into the room to get them and put them on. She kept shaking her head and her gold wheat-grain earrings slammed from side to side, amplifying her disapproval. “You really don’t care about your mother’s lecture, huh?” Demeter complained after fastening the straps, now checking her blonde hairstyle and making sure that her suit was well-pressed.
“Of course I care! But you have to relax, you’re always so apprehensive!”
“I’m not apprehensive, I’m just prudent.”
After that, Demeter pulled a series of cards out of her pocket. She had prepared a good speech, she was taking her role just as seriously as all the major Gods.
Demeter checked that she had all the cards and they were in the right order. When she was assured of their condition, she placed them in her pocket again and sighed with satisfaction. With a wave of her hands she pointed at herself, raising her slender chin. “So? How do I look? “
“Well, you’re...”
“Gorgeous? Better than Aphrodite?”
“You’re tall.”
Demeter smiled and patted her shoulder, amused by that teasing, after all. “Maybe it’s you being short, darling.”
“It should be illegal for you to put those heels on.” Said Persephone, playing with her. “How tall are you? Six foot three?”
“Six foot five, with these jewels on my feet.”
She boasted about it, because she was still a Goddess, and the pride of the Gods is boundless, however humble their functions may be.
Demeter stopped playing and sighed again, restoring seriousness to the whole environment. She tightened her full lips a little and tried to reopen a speech that Persephone would rather leave in oblivion.
“So, are you sure you don’t want to come with me? I could let you talk a little. At the Agricultural University they would surely find what you have to say interesting.”
“Mamma, we’ve already talked about it. I don’t want to go on stage because you are the one giving me the opportunity to. It will be for the next decade, if they put me in the lineup of divine speakers.”
“At least come to the audience, I...”
But Persephone shook her head with a sympathetic smile. She came a little closer and had to look up to see her mother’s face. “You’ll be perfect. You’re very good and you have prepared a surprising speech, but you know that the ecology in fertilizing vineyards isn’t... my cup of tea.”
This time, a severe expression appeared on Demeter’s young and at the same time ancient face. She pulled the corners of her mouth a little as she looked down at her daughter. “It should be. That’s what you’re destined for.”
“What? I’m destined for crops and farms? There’s already you for this. And you’ll never die, so what’s my purpose?”
“This is what you’re destined for.” Reiterated Demeter, as if it were the answer to any universal question. “Not even the Gods can choose their role, so all you have to do is accept it. And don’t wish me death, thank you.”
That last was a joke, because Gods were like this: they took mortality very lightly. They joked about it, maybe a little too much. Still, after thousands of years, they hadn’t understood why mortals were rightly sensitive to the subject.
Persephone remained silent. She didn’t want to argue, because deep down she knew that Demeter was saddened. She had taken her daughter’s interest in other subjects of study as a small betrayal. She had never stopped her from reading mortal novels, nor had she prevented her from enrolling in the University of Law as a common mortal, but she had always tried to draw water to her own mill and bring Persephone back on her steps. How could Persephone blame her, anyway? It had to be a considerable test to give birth to a new, lesser Goddess, who, moreover, had preserved almost nothing in her appearance of Uranus’ ancient heritage.
Demeter shook her head again, but she didn’t insist either. She smiled bitterly and put her big hands on her daughter’s minute shoulders. “Well, at least you’ll go to some other divine conference, won’t you? It’s the last day of the event, I want you to see some of the other Gods, maybe they can get to know you a little. I’ve heard that there are some lectures at the Law University as well, you could go and listen to what they have to say.”
Not that Demeter had been actively interested in the lineup, of course, because if she had known who the speakers were, she certainly wouldn’t have encouraged Persephone to participate. The young Goddess chuckled inwardly, knowing that Demeter would not approve of what she was about to hear. “Of course I’ll go! There are Dike and Astraea, they’ll talk about social justice. And there’ll also be a very interesting seminar held by the Gods of the Underworld, about the judgments of the dead souls.”
She accompanied that last sentence with a broad and exaggerated smile, hoping that it would calm down the harvest Goddess’ disapproval. But this was not the case: Demeter frowned, making no secret of her scarce enthusiasm. “The Underworld. Great. Such a party.”
“Why, is it a party when you talk about fertilizing to the agricultural students?”
But Demeter didn’t even seem to hear that last stab, and continued on her way: “And who will be there as a guest?”
Persephone shrugged, faking ignorance. She walked away from her mother, turned her back to her, acting indifferent. “Well, you know, the usual: Hel, Cernunnos, Anubis...”
“Anubis would look better teaching taxidermy. And then? Will there be... him?”
Persephone pursed her lips and opened her eyes, looking falsely innocent. She assumed the most vague and ignorant expression she managed to disguise. “Him, who?”
“You know who.”
“Mom, you can say his name, he’s not Voldemort.”
But Demeter didn’t want to be teased, and in fact she didn’t give in, she didn’t pronounce that name. The scene then stalled a few seconds before an exasperated Persephone unlocked it: “Oh, you mean Hades?” she asked, sarcastically, “Yeah, I think I’ve seen his name on the flyer. But it’s not like he shows up very often, maybe he won’t even come.”
Demeter looked up to heaven, without the slightest intention to conceal the annoyance she felt towards her dark brother. The same thing happened with all the other male siblings, in truth, that hostility wasn’t only for the God of the Underworld.
Persephone, who didn’t know Hades but who hated preconceptions, didn’t hide her annoyance. “Who cares who the guests are? I just have to listen to a lecture, I’m not going to marry him!”
“Don’t joke about this, Kore!” Demeter reproached her, then relaxed just a bit, “And anyway, you wouldn’t like him. That God is so boring.”
“Being boring isn’t a crime, is it?”
“Just spend ten minutes with him, then you’ll tell me.”
Demeter shook her head and went to the door, to go fix the last details of her divine figure. Persephone, as she saw her leave bending under the lintel, stopped her: “Mom, why do you hate your brothers so much?”
Demeter stopped halfway, thoughtful and reluctant. “It’s not that I hate them, it’s that... they’re men, and they’re kings. Power and testosterone aren’t a good match.”
“Okay, I can understand Zeus and Poseidon, they’re always surrounded by scandals. But Hades? He doesn’t look so despicable, he never even appears on the surface.”
Demeter shrugged. “He is the most reliable of them, but he has his faults. And, between us, it’s not him you have to bet on, if you want to look at Olympus. Make friends with Dike, rather.”
Demeter didn’t add anything else: she left the room definitively, and from that moment on Persephone heard her muttering her speech in a low voice, repeating it for the great event.
Persephone abandoned her crusade in favor of the misunderstood Gods and decided to dress up. It was still very hot for that season, so she opted for a short, white cotton dress with blue decorations, with lots of tassels on the edge of the skirt. She adjusted her long, frizzy walnut hair in a braid. That day, the spontaneous flowers growing in her hair were small and pretty peach buds: she didn’t disturb them, hoping that they would blossom once she came out in the sun, to better decorate her figure.
She looked at herself in the mirror for the last time and saw how every day she seemed more mortal than the previous one, in her extremely limited height of five foot four, her tan, her round and chubby thighs, her curvy breasts, her not so flat belly. And once again it came to her mind that this was the only usefulness of her power: to make beautiful flowery hairstyles, cultivate mini-cacti on the desk, and finally listen to her mother suggest how to climb to success through the right friendships (provided that Demeter, with that suggestion about Dike, wasn’t implying something sapphic).
Well, that was her life now, wasn’t it? It was her already written destiny, as Demeter asserted. And all her metaphysical purposes of justice, eternal prosperity, mercy towards adoring humanity were nothing more than the dreams of a naive little girl.
Now, did you get your answer, Epicurus?
[1] In the original myth, Persephone wasn’t in fact purely Greek. In the prevailing version, she lived and was kidnapped near Lake Pergusa, Sicily. In this retelling, we’ll keep the Italic peninsula as an area; the narrative, however, will be moved to the Capital, for reasons of narrative economy related to the appearance of the University “La Sapienza” and the reference to the ancient Roman pantheon.