Proserpina [SEP] father
all in vain. She was unable to find anything but a small belt floating upon a little lake made from the tears of the nymphs. In her desperation, Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, bestowing a malediction on Sicily. Ceres refused to return to Mount Olympus and started walking the Earth, creating a desert with each step.
Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto (Jupiter's brother) to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds
pomerium". The race seems to have been staged with temporary facilities on the Trigarium, near the Tarentum, the precinct within which the Altar of Dis and Proserpina was located. Father Dis was the Roman equivalent of the Greek "Plouton" (Pluto), and his consort Proserpina (Persephone) embodied the vegetative cycle of growth symbolizing the course of the human soul through birth, death, and rebirth into the afterlife, over which the couple presided in the mysteries. The cult may have been imported to Rome when the