Editing Persephone (section)

=== Queen of the underworld ===
In mythology and literature she is often called dread(ed) Persephone, and queen of the underworld, within which tradition it was forbidden to speak her name. This tradition comes from her conflation with the very old chthonic divinity Despoina ("[the] mistress"), whose real name could not be revealed to anyone except those initiated into her mysteries.<ref>{{harvnb|Pausanias|loc=[https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias8C.html#5 Book 8, Ch. 37, sect. 9] }}</ref> As goddess of death, she was also called a daughter of Zeus and [[Styx]],<ref>{{harvnb|Apollodorus, ''Bibliotheca''|loc=[http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.3.1 1.3.1]}}</ref> the river that formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld. In [[Homer]]'s epics, she appears always together with [[Hades]] in the underworld, apparently sharing with Hades control over the dead.<ref>{{harvnb|Gantz|1996|p=64}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Homer, ''Odyssey''||loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+10.491&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136 ''Book 10'', ln. 494]}}.</ref> In Homer's ''[[Odyssey]]'', Odysseus encounters the "dread Persephone" in [[Tartarus]] when he visits his dead mother. Odysseus sacrifices a ram to the chthonic goddess Persephone and the ghosts of the dead, who drink the blood of the sacrificed animal. In the reformulation of Greek mythology expressed in the ''[[Orphic Hymns]]'', Dionysus and Melinoë are separately called children of Zeus and Persephone.<ref>''Orphic Hymn 26'', ''71''</ref> Groves sacred to her stood at the western extremity of the earth on the frontiers of the lower world, which itself was called "house of Persephone".<ref>{{harvnb|Homer, ''Odyssey''||loc=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+10.491&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136 Book 10, ln. 491, ln. 509]}}</ref>

Her central myth served as the context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis,<ref>{{harvnb|Kerenyi|1967|loc=passim}}</ref> which promised immortality to initiates.