Demeter sat there [in her new-built temple in Eleusis] apart from all the blessed gods and stayed, wasting with yearning for her deep-bosomed daughter [i.e. Persephone who was abducted by Haides]. Then she caused a most dreadful and cruel year for mankind over the all-nourishing earth: the ground would not make the seed sprout, for rich-crowned Demeter kept it hid. In the fields the oxen drew many a curved plough in vain, and much white barley was cast upon the land without avail. And so she would have destroyed the whole race of man with cruel famine . . . had not Zeus perceived and marked this in his heart . . . [Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, addresses Haides :] ‘Zeus bids me bring noble Persephone forth from Erebos unto the gods, that her mother may see her with her eyes and cease from her dread anger with the immortals; for now she plans an awful deed, to destroy the weakly tribes of earthborn men by keeping seed hidden beneath the earth.’"- theoi.com