Reflections On Greece Part II: A 3D Divine Family Portrait

My photo of a pair of  statutes of Persephone, Hades and Cerberus 

from the archaeological museum in Heraklion, Greece. 

It is distinctive for having both Greek and Roman elements.

Hades a.k.a. Aidoneus a.k.a. Pluto, was notable for being one of the few Chthonic (i.e. underworld based) gods in the Greek pantheon. He was Zeus's brother and Persephone's uncle.

Persephone (a.k.a. "Kore", i.e. the maiden) was worshipped in a distinctive way in Crete which is notable:

In the Near eastern myth of the early agricultural societies, every year the fertility goddess bore the "god of the new year", who then became her lover, and died immediately in order to be reborn and face the same destiny. Some findings from Catal Huyuk since the Neolithic age, indicate the worship of the Great Goddess accompanied by a boyish consort, who symbolizes the annual decay and return of vegetation. Similar cults of resurrected gods appear in the Near East and Egypt in the cults of Attis, Adonis and Osiris. 

In Minoan Crete, the "divine child" was related to the female vegetation divinity Ariadne who died every year. The Minoan religion had its own characteristics. The most peculiar feature of the Minoan belief in the divine, is the appearance of the goddess from above in the dance. Dance floors have been discovered in addition to "vaulted tombs", and it seems that the dance was ecstatic. Homer memorializes the dance floor which Daedalus built for Ariadne in the remote past. On the gold ring from Isopata, four women in festal attire are performing a dance between blossoming flowers. Above a figure apparently floating in the air seems to be the goddess herself, appearing amid the whirling dance. An image plate from the first palace of Phaistos, seems to be very close to the mythical image of the Anodos (ascent) of Persephone. Two girls dance between blossoming flowers, on each side of a similar but armless and legless figure which seems to grow out of the ground. The goddess is bordered by snake lines which give her a vegetable like appearance She has a large stylized flower turned over her head. The resemblance with the flower-picking Persephone and her companions is compelling. The depiction of the goddess is similar to later images of "Anodos of Pherephata". On the Dresden vase, Persephone is growing out of the ground, and she is surrounded by the animal-tailed agricultural gods Silenoi. 

Kerenyi suggests that the name Ariadne (derived from ἁγνή, hagne, "pure"), was an euphemistical name given by the Greeks to the nameless "Mistress of the labyrinth" who appears in a Mycenean Greek inscription from Knossos in Crete. The Greeks used to give friendly names to the deities of the underworld. Cthonic Zeus was called Eubuleus, "the good counselor", and the ferryman of the river of the underworld Charon, "glad". Despoina and "Hagne" were probably euphemistic surnames of Persephone, therefore he theorizes that the cult of Persephone was the continuation of the worship of a Minoan Great goddess. The labyrinth was both a winding dance-ground and, in the Greek view, a prison with the dreaded Minotaur at its centre. It is possible that some religious practices, especially the mysteries, were transferred from a Cretan priesthood to Eleusis, where Demeter brought the poppy from Crete. Besides these similarities, Burkert explains that up to now it is not known to what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenean religion. In the Anthesteria Dionysos is the "divine child".

Try as I might, I did not see any visual depictions of someone else related to this husband, wife and dog family, Minthe anywhere on my trip, although at least some of their children (most famously Dionysus) were depctied. Even a store keeper in a particularly promising mythology and mythology replica store wasn't familiar with Minthe, about whom Wikipedia explains:

In Greek mythology, Minthe (also Menthe, Mintha or Mentha; Greek: Μίνθη or Μένθη) was a naiad associated with the river Cocytus. 

Etymology 

The -nth- element in menthe is characteristic of a class of words borrowed from a Pre-Greek language: compare acanthus, labyrinth, Corinth, etc. 

Mythology

Minthe was dazzled by Hades and made an attempt to seduce him, but Queen Persephone intervened and metamorphosed Minthe, in the words of Strabo's account, "into the garden mint, which some call hedyosmon (lit. 'sweet-smelling')".[1]

"Mint (Mintha), men say, was once a maid beneath the earth, a Nymphe of Kokytos (Cocytus), and she lay in the bed of Aidoneus [Hades]; but when he raped the maid Persephone from the Aitnaian hill [Mount Etna in Sicily], then she complained loudly with overweening words and raved foolishly for jealousy, and Demeter in anger trampled upon her with her feet and destroyed her. For she had said that she was nobler of form and more excellent in beauty than dark-eyed Persephone and she boasted that Aidoneus would return to her and banish the other from his halls : such infatuation leapt upon her tongue. And from the earth spray the weak herb that bears her name."[2] 

Culture

In ancient Greece, mint was used in funerary rites, together with rosemary and myrtle, and not simply to offset the smell of decay; mint was an element in the fermented barley drink called the kykeon that was an essential preparatory entheogen for participants in the Eleusinian mysteries, which offered hope in the afterlife for initiates. 

References 

[1] Strabo, Geographica VIII.3.14.  

[2] Oppian, Halieutica 3. 485 f