Minthe Trampled by Persephone

Catalogue ID: 02-olympian-gods/123-minthe-hades-persephone-strabo-ovid

Cycle: Olympian gods — Persephone / Hades / plant aetiology

Version line: Strabonian / Oppianic Greek + Ovid-labeled Roman — river-nymph rival; mint plant

Sources: Strabo 8.3.14; Oppian, *Halieutica* 3.485–498; Ovid, *Metamorphoses* 10.728–731 (**Roman**—brief notice, labeled); cf. scholia

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/02-olympian-gods/123-minthe-hades-persephone-strabo-ovid.md

Characters

Demeter — alternate agent of punishment (variant notices)
Hades — lover; underworld king
Minthe — nymph mistress of Hades; becomes mint
Persephone — jealous queen; tramples/tears the rival

Places

Hades — Minthe’s haunt
Mint beds — aetiological plant
Triphylian Pylus region — Strabo’s mint topography

Themes

Narrative

Minthe (Menthe), a nymph of the underworld or of the Cocytus/Underworld river-sphere associated with Hades’s bed, boasted that she was more beautiful than Persephone and that Hades would cast his queen aside for her. Persephone (or Demeter, in some notices) in anger trampled her and tore her to pieces; from the crushed body sprang the mint plant (*minthē*), fragrant yet humble. Strabo locates a mint-associated topography near Pylus in Triphylia (Hades’s western entry lore); Oppian elaborates the rivalry and metamorphosis. Ovid’s Roman Adonis-context alludes briefly to Menthe transformed by the queen of Dis. Catalogue the mint aetiology apart from the Eleusinian core myth.