Okay, this isn’t actually about a showdown between Persephone and Astraea so much as there are two tales that accompany this constellation.
If we think about Virgo, the general image that is summoned is of a girl holding wheat. There’s a lot to glean from this image. One (and the most straightforward) is that the girl is a virgin and a symbol of purity. Another is that the wheat is untouched and will undergo quite a lot before it reaches its final form, ready for consumption. If we think about the time of year when we are in Virgo season, we’ll see that it is the final third of summer. When Virgo season ends, autumn begins. Vegetation starts to die and this is why the abduction of Persephone is fitting for this sign of the Zodiac.
Persephone (the same one from one of the Taurean Tales) was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. She was also the goddess of spring and, since she lived in the moral world, sheltered by her mother, it always remained spring. One day, a giant crack formed in the earth and from this Hades emerged in his Chariot. He abducted Persephone and brought her back down to the Underworld.
Demeter was bereft as she had lost her only daughter and fell into a deep despair. As she grieved, all the world suffered as crops died, and flora and fauna ceased to grow. Zeus, seeing this, eventually intervened and said that Persephone could be returned so that the earth could be fertile once again.
The only hitch in this plan was that nothing was to be eaten or consumed by Persephone while she was in the Underworld. The bad news about that was that Persephone did indeed eat 6 pomegranate seeds. Each seed came to represent a month and so she was bound to spend six months with her mother on earth and six months in the Underworld with Hades. We can see the start of Spring at the beginning of Aries each year, and this fertile time eventually comes to an inevitable end at the finish of Virgo season.
The more literal interpretation of this would be to look to Astraea. Astraea was the daughter of Themis, goddess of Justice (shout out to Libra). Astraea, much like her mother, rules over balance, the difference being that she is more concerned with natural law and the balance of the all in the universe. As time wore on and Astraea witnessed more and more of the negativity that humanity perpetuated, she grew disgusted and sent herself to the stars and became the constellation that we now know as Virgo.
In both these myths, we can see themes of innocence lost and upholding the purity in the world. While there are many more attributes to this sign, these are two tales that exemplify Virgo’s chief characteristic.