Nondum Proserpina abstulerat: Persephone in the Aeneid

Abstract

The underworld goddess Persephone appears infrequently in the Virgilian corpus, but serves as a key unifying figure in the poet’s achievement, an important companion to his depiction of Orpheus in both the Aeneid and the Georgics. Hell’s queen ultimately figures as the third figure in a series of failed sacrifices attempted by Aeneas. The Trojan hero’s attempt to placate the mother of the Furies is answered with the Fury Allecto ; his effort to conciliate Juno brings the ethnographic reality of Troy’s suppression and Italy’s ascendance, and his offering to Persephone is revealed as vain and without effect in light of Virgil’s allegiance to Lucretian eschatology.