Hades tricked Persphone

The argument

Proponents of this position accept that Persephone performed the act that sealed her fate: it was her own choice to eat the pomegranate seeds. Their argument is that this concession does not establish consent, because the choice was made in ignorance of what it would do. She did not know that eating the seeds would mean she could not leave the home of her kidnapper. What she took herself to be doing was something more ordinary — appealing to Hades, and settling a hunger that had become pressing. The gap between the act and its consequence is what the argument turns on. On this view the pomegranate carried a significance that was not visible in the act of eating it; as one source states, "By eating a few pomegranate seeds, Persephone tied herself to Hades—the pomegranate being a symbol of the indissolubility of marriage". That meaning is conventional rather than self-evident. Nothing in the fruit itself announces that consuming it constitutes a permanent and unbreakable bond, and supporters of the position press the question of how she could have known. Their answer is that she could not have known. The condition ordinarily required for a choice to count as free — that the chooser understands what is being chosen — was absent. Proponents further argue that the timing tells against any innocent reading of the episode. She was close to leaving when she ate, so the act that bound her to Hades fell precisely at the moment when his hold on her was about to end. On this account Hades took advantage of her ignorance and her hunger at exactly the point where doing so would be decisive, and that is what it is to trick someone rather than to persuade them. If her apparent consent was produced in this way, it cannot be cited as evidence that she remained willingly. She was forced, and on this reading she was kidnapped.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Many sources state that Persephone willingly ate the pomegranate seeds. In fact, this is the more common version of the story. She defiantly ate them out of her love for Hades, due to her conflicting between her mother, Demeter, and her lover. She knew what she was doing.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise concedes the difficulty in its own wording: what "sealed her fate" was a choice she made. Whether she knew what the seeds signified is disputed across the sources, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter — the earliest full account — has Hades give her the seed secretly, which supports the trickery reading while showing that the argument rests on one text and presents the matter as settled. [Rejecting P2] Deception and abduction are different claims and the argument runs them together. If Persephone had to be tricked into staying, the trick is evidence about how she was kept rather than about how she came to be there. The conclusion also does not need this premise, since the abduction is narrated directly in the same hymn — so the argument has chosen its weakest available ground. As the counter-argument notes, other tellings have her eat the seeds knowingly, and no reason is given for preferring one version.