The Compromise and the Eleusinian Mysteries

Zeus sends Hermes to the underworld to negotiate Persephone's return, and Hades agrees to release her, but not before persuading her to eat a few pomegranate seeds, a detail the hymn makes clear is a deliberate trick, since eating the food of the dead binds a person to the underworld. Because of the seeds, Persephone cannot be fully restored to her mother; the resulting compromise has her spend part of each year with Hades below and the remaining months above with Demeter, during which the earth flourishes and bears its harvest, while Persephone's annual descent is mirrored by the barren season.

The hymn does not end with the reunion alone. It also relates how Demeter, during her wandering and in gratitude for the hospitality shown her at Eleusis, taught the local rulers the rites that became the Eleusinian Mysteries, an initiation cult that endured for well over a thousand years as one of the most important religious institutions of the ancient Greek world, promising initiates a more favorable fate after death. The myth is therefore both an explanation of the seasons and, in ancient practice, the founding charter of a specific and highly influential cult, two functions the hymn treats as inseparable even though modern retellings often isolate the nature-myth element alone.