Indeed, but Pluto then made Persephone his queen (Proserpina) which shows he was serious about her, and she apparently also came to love Pluto. Also, according to darkdreamer, they seemed to be the only pair other than Eros & Psyche that were loyal & faithful to each other. I've yet to verify this, of course but the interpretation doesn't seem bad other than the initial abduction.
quote:
"Pluto was once absolutely uninterested and unwilling to fall in love and allow feelings distract him from his job. That was just not his "cup of tea". He was doing his job and that was it.
Now, Aphrodite and Eros didn`t approve of that detached attitude, and Aphrodite convinced her son to shoot one of his arrows on Pluto.Now, when Pluto came up from the underworld Eros shot him, and Pluto fell desperately in love with the young maiden he saw plucking flowers (in other versions, he just fell in love with her without the influence of Eros).
That young virginal maiden was Proserpine / Persephone, the daughter of the goddess Demeter / Ceres, a goddess of spring herself (Proserpine the spring goddess).
However, Pluto was obsessed with Proserpine, and made a blood red narcissus grow on the field. Proserpine was fascinated, intrigued by the flower, but didn`t dare plucking it.
But the image of that flower haunted her even in her sleep, so she got up at night, returned to the field and plucked that flower.
The same moment the ground opened and Pluto rose up, grabbing the girl and abducting her into his underworld. He was completely in love with her, but in the obsessive, posessive way, so he didn`t ask for long.
Now some versions of the myth say he raped her, others say he seduced her and she finally gave in to him.
However, Pluto really loved her and so he made her queen of the underworld, his equal partner!
Proserpine also couldn`t leave the underworld, cause she had eaten 6 (or 4) semen of the pomenagrate, and if you ate something in the underworld, you had to stay.
So she stayed with Pluto (well, at least for half the year; the other half she spent with her mother, who missed her so much).
And the interesting thing is, that this couple seems to be the only one in Roman mythology (except for Eros and Psyche), who were loyal and faithful to each other. Or at least both took care that the other didn`t pursue his or her romantic interestes too fervently, as both, Pluto as well as Proserpine, were pretty jealous and passionately in love with each other, after the very tumultous beginning.
One interpretation of the myth sais that Proserpine NEEDED to be abducted and needed to lose her innocence (virginity) to become a full woman.
The bond to her mother, which had just been too tight (Ceres and Proserpine had been inseparable), had to be broken, so Proserpine could become a woman of her own.
It`s actually a story about the growing up, and transformation from a young girl into a woman with sexual and emotional needs."