Hades

For other uses, see Hades (disambiguation).

Hades
Hades with Cerberus (Heraklion Archaeological Museum)
King of the underworld God of the Dead and Riches
Abode	Underworld
Symbol	Cerberus, Cap of invisibility, or Helm of Darkness, Cypress, Narcissus and Key of Hades
Consort	Persephone
Parents	Cronus and Rhea
Siblings	Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Zeus, Chiron
Children	Macaria, Melinoe and Zagreus
Roman equivalent	Dis Pater, Orcus

Hades (English pronunciation: /ˈheɪdiːz/; from Greek ᾍδης (older form Ἀϝίδης), Hadēs, originally Ἅιδης, Haidēs or Άΐδης, Aidēs (Doric Ἀΐδας Aidas), meaning "the unseen"^[1]) was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive ᾍδου, Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.

In Greek mythology, Hades is the oldest male child of Cronus and Rhea. According to myth, he and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed rulership over the cosmos, ruling the underworld, air, and sea, respectively; the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, was available to all three concurrently. Because of his association with the underworld, Hades is often interpreted in modern times as the personification of death^{[citation needed]}, even though he was not.

Hades was also called "Plouton" (Greek: Πλούτων, gen.: Πλούτωνος, meaning "Rich One"), a name which the Romans Latinized as Pluto.^[2] The Romans would associate Hades/Pluto with their own chthonic gods, Dis Pater and Orcus. The corresponding Etruscan god was Aita.

Symbols associated with him are the Helm of Darkness and the three-headed dog, Cerberus.

The term hades in Christian theology (and in New Testament Greek) is parallel to Hebrew sheol (שאול, grave or dirt-pit), and refers to the abode of the dead. The Christian concept of hell is more akin to and communicated by the Greek concept of Tartarus, a deep, gloomy part of hades used as a dungeon of torment and suffering.

God of the underworld

Greek underworld
Residents
Aeacus Cerberus Charon Erinyes Hades Hecate	Hypnos Minos Moirae Persephone Rhadamanthus Thanatos
Geography
Acheron Asphodel Fields Cocytus Elysion	Erebus Lethe Phlegethon Styx Tartarus
Famous inmates
The Danaides Ixion Salmoneus Sisyphus	Tantalus The Titans Tityus
Visitors
Aeneas Dionysus Heracles Hermes Odysseus	Orpheus Pirithous Psyche Theseus
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In Greek mythology, Hades (the "unseen"), the god of the underworld, was a son of the Titans, Cronus and Rhea. He had three sisters, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, as well as two brothers, Zeus, the youngest of the three, and Poseidon, collectively comprising the original six Olympian gods. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades received weapons from the three Cyclopes to help in the war: Zeus the thunderbolt, Hades the Helm of Darkness, and Poseidon the trident. The night before the first battle, Hades put on his helmet and, being invisible, slipped over to the Titans' camp and destroyed their weapons.^{[citation needed]} The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad (xv.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots^[3] for realms to rule. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon got the seas, and Hades received the underworld,^[4] the unseen realm to which the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth.

Hades obtained his eventual consort and queen, Persephone, through trickery, a story that connected the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon in a founding myth for the realm of the dead. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not unworthy as a consort for Persephone:

"Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also, for honor, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those among whom he dwells."

— Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology. Hades was often portrayed as passive rather than evil; his role was often maintaining relative balance. Hades ruled the dead, assisted by others over whom he had complete authority. He strictly forbade his subjects to leave his domain and would become quite enraged when anyone tried to leave, or if someone tried to steal the souls from his realm. His wrath was equally terrible for anyone who tried to cheat death or otherwise crossed him, as Sisyphus and Pirithous found out to their sorrow. Besides Heracles, the only other living people who ventured to the Underworld were all heroes: Odysseus, Aeneas (accompanied by the Sibyl), Orpheus, Theseus with Pirithous, and, in a late romance, Psyche. None of them were pleased with what they witnessed in the realm of the dead. In particular, the Greek war hero Achilles, whom Odysseus conjured with a blood libation, said:

"O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying.
I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another
man, one with no land allotted to him and not much to live on,
than be a king over all the perished dead."

— Achilles' soul to Odysseus. Homer, Odyssey 11.488-491

Cult

Hades, god of the dead, was a fearsome figure to those still living; in no hurry to meet him, they were reticent to swear oaths in his name, and averted their faces when sacrificing to him. Since to many, simply to say the word "Hades" was frightening, euphemisms were pressed into use. Since precious minerals come from under the earth (i.e., the "underworld" ruled by Hades), he was considered to have control of these as well, and was referred to as Πλούτων (Plouton, related to the word for "wealth"), hence the Roman name Pluto. Sophocles explained referring to Hades as "the rich one" with these words: "the gloomy Hades enriches himself with our sighs and our tears." In addition, he was called Clymenus ("notorious"), Polydegmon ("who receives many"), and perhaps Eubuleus ("good counsel" or "well-intentioned"),^[5] all of them euphemisms for a name that was unsafe to pronounce, which evolved into epithets.

Hades and Cerberus, in Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1888

Although he was an Olympian,^{[citation needed]} he spent most of the time in his dark realm. Formidable in battle, he proved his ferocity in the famous Titanomachy, the battle of the Olympians versus the Titans, which established the rule of Zeus.

Feared and loathed, Hades embodied the inexorable finality of death: "Why do we loathe Hades more than any god, if not because he is so adamantine and unyielding?" The rhetorical question is Agamemnon's (Iliad, ix). He was not, however, an evil god, for although he was stern, cruel, and unpitying, he was still just. Hades ruled the Underworld and was therefore most often associated with death and feared by men, but he was not Death itself — the actual embodiment of Death was Thanatos.

When the Greeks propitiated Hades, they banged their hands on the ground to be sure he would hear them.^[6] Black animals, such as sheep, were sacrificed to him, and the very vehemence of the rejection of human sacrifice expressed in myth suggests an unspoken memory of some distant past.^{[citation needed]} The blood from all chthonic sacrifices including those to propitiate Hades dripped into a pit or cleft in the ground. The person who offered the sacrifice had to avert his face.^[7]

One ancient source says that he possessed the Cap of invisibility. His chariot, drawn by four black horses, made for a fearsome and impressive sight. His other ordinary attributes were the Narcissus and Cypress plants, the Key of Hades and Cerberus, the three-headed dog. He sat on an ebony throne.^{[citation needed]}

The philosopher Heraclitus, unifying opposites, declared that Hades and Dionysus, the very essence of indestructible life zoë, are the same god.^[8] Amongst other evidence Karl Kerenyi notes that the grieving goddess Demeter refused to drink wine, which is the gift of Dionysus, after Persephone's abduction, because of this association, and suggests that Hades may in fact have been a 'cover name' for the underworld Dionysus.^[9] Furthermore he suggests that this dual identity may have been familiar to those who came into contact with the Mysteries (Kerenyi 1976, p. 240). One of the epithets of Dionysus was "Chthonios", meaning "the subterranean" (Kerenyi 1976, p. 83).^[10]

Artistic representations

Hades is rarely represented in classical arts, save in depictions of the Rape of Persephone.^[11][12]

Persephone

Persephone and Hades: tondo of an Attic red-figured kylix, ca. 440–430 BC

The consort of Hades was Persephone, represented by the Greeks as the beautiful daughter of Demeter.^[13]

Persephone did not submit to Hades willingly, but was abducted by him while picking flowers in the fields of Nysa. In protest of his act, Demeter cast a curse on the land and there was a great famine; though, one by one, the gods came to request she lift it, lest mankind perish, she asserted that the earth would remain barren until she saw her daughter again. Finally, Zeus intervened; via Hermes, he requested that Hades return Persephone. Hades complied,

"But he on his part secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, taking care for himself that she might not remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter."^[14]

Demeter questioned Persephone on her return to light and air:

"...but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods."^[14]

This bound her to Hades and the Underworld, much to the dismay of Demeter. It is not clear whether Persephone was accomplice to the ploy. Zeus proposed a compromise, to which all parties agreed: of the year, Persephone would spend one third with her husband.^[15]

It is during this time that winter casts on the earth "an aspect of sadness and mourning."^[16]

Theseus and Pirithous

Theseus and Pirithous pledged to kidnap and marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus chose Helen and together they kidnapped her and decided to hold onto her until she was old enough to marry. Pirithous chose Persephone. They left Helen with Theseus' mother, Aethra and traveled to the Underworld. Hades knew of their plan to capture his wife, so he pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast; as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there. Theseus was eventually rescued by Heracles but Pirithous remained trapped as punishment for daring to seek the wife of a god for his own.

Heracles

Heracles' final labour was to capture Cerberus. First, Heracles went to Eleusis to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. He did this to absolve himself of guilt for killing the centaurs and to learn how to enter and exit the underworld alive. He found the entrance to the underworld at Taenarum. Athena and Hermes helped him through and back from Hades. Heracles asked Hades for permission to take Cerberus. Hades agreed as long as Heracles didn't harm Cerberus. When Heracles dragged the dog out of Hades, he passed through the cavern Acherusia.

Minthe

According to Ovid,^{[citation needed]} Hades pursued and would have won the nymph Minthe, associated with the river Cocytus, had not Persephone turned Minthe into the plant called mint.

Realm of Hades

Main article: Greek underworld

In older Greek myths, the realm of Hades is the misty and gloomy^[17] abode of the dead (also called Erebus), where all mortals go. Later Greek philosophy introduced the idea that all mortals are judged after death and are either rewarded or cursed. Very few mortals could leave his realm once they entered: the exceptions, Heracles, Theseus, are heroic. Even Odysseus in his Nekyia (Odyssey, xi) calls up the spirits of the departed, rather than descend to them.

There were several sections of the realm of Hades, including Elysium, the Asphodel Meadows, and Tartarus. Greek mythographers were not perfectly consistent about the geography of the afterlife. A contrasting myth of the afterlife concerns the Garden of the Hesperides, often identified with the Isles of the Blessed, where the blessed heroes may dwell.

Aeneas's journey to Hades through the entrance at Cumae mapped by Andrea de Jorio, 1825

In Roman mythology, the entrance to the Underworld located at Avernus, a crater near Cumae, was the route Aeneas used to descend to the realm of the dead.^[18] By synecdoche, "Avernus" could be substituted for the underworld as a whole. The Inferi Dii were the Roman gods of the underworld.

For Hellenes, the deceased entered the underworld by crossing the Acheron, ferried across by Charon (kair'-on), who charged an obolus, a small coin for passage placed in the mouth of the deceased by pious relatives. Paupers and the friendless gathered for a hundred years on the near shore according to Book VI of Vergil's Aeneid. Greeks offered propitiatory libations to prevent the deceased from returning to the upper world to "haunt" those who had not given them a proper burial. The far side of the river was guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog defeated by Heracles (Roman Hercules). Passing beyond Cerberus, the shades of the departed entered the land of the dead to be judged.

The five rivers of the realm of Hades, and their symbolic meanings, are Acheron (the river of sorrow, or woe), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire), Lethe (oblivion), and Styx (hate), the river upon which even the gods swore and in which Achilles was dipped to render him invincible. The Styx forms the boundary between the upper and lower worlds. See also Eridanos.

The first region of Hades comprises the Fields of Asphodel, described in Odyssey xi, where the shades of heroes wander despondently among lesser spirits, who twitter around them like bats. Only libations of blood offered to them in the world of the living can reawaken in them for a time the sensations of humanity.

Beyond lay Erebus, which could be taken for a euphonym of Hades, whose own name was dread. There were two pools, that of Lethe, where the common souls flocked to erase all memory, and the pool of Mnemosyne ("memory"), where the initiates of the Mysteries drank instead. In the forecourt of the palace of Hades and Persephone sit the three judges of the Underworld: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus. There at the trivium sacred to Hecate, where three roads meet, souls are judged, returned to the Fields of Asphodel if they are neither virtuous nor evil, sent by the road to Tartarus if they are impious or evil, or sent to Elysium (Islands of the Blessed) with the "blameless" heroes.

In the Sibylline oracles, a curious hodgepodge of Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian elements, Hades again appears as the abode of the dead, and by way of folk etymology, it even derives Hades from the name Adam (the first man), saying it is because he was the first to enter there.^[19]

Charon the ferryman

In ancient Greece it was customary to place a coin in or on the mouth of the dead since the dead were required to pay a fare to Charon, the ferryman of Hades.^[20]

Judeo-Christian Hades

Main article: Hades in Christianity

Hades is the standard translation for Sheol in the Septuagint, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and other Jewish works written in Greek.

In the Greek version of an obscure Judaeo-Christian work known as 3 Baruch (never considered canonical by any known group), "Hades" is described as a dark, serpent-like monster or dragon who drinks a cubit of water from the sea every day, and is 200 plethra (20,200 English feet, or nearly four miles) in length.

Like other first-century Jews literate in Greek, early Christians used the Greek word Hades to translate the Hebrew word Sheol. Thus, in Acts 2:27, the Hebrew phrase in Psalm 16:10 appears in the form: "you will not abandon my soul to Hades." Death and Hades are repeatedly associated in the Book of Revelation.^[21]

The New Testament uses the Greek word Hades to refer to the temporary abode of the dead (e.g. Acts 2:31; Revelation 20:13).^[22] Only one passage describes hades as a place of torment, the story of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16:19-31). Here, Jesus depicts a wicked man suffering fiery torment in hades, which is contrasted with the bosom of Abraham, and explains that it is impossible to cross over from one location to the other. Some scholars believe that this parable reflects the intertestamental Jewish view of hades (or sheol) as containing separate divisions for the wicked and righteous.^[22][23] In Revelation 20:13-14 hades is itself thrown into the "lake of fire" after being emptied of the dead.

In Latin, Hades could be translated as Purgatorium (Purgatory in English use) after about 1200 A.D.,^[24] but no modern English translations relates Hades to Purgatory.

See also

• Ereshkigal
• Ghosts in Mesopotamian religions
• Hades in popular culture
• Irkalla
• Saveasi'uleo
• The Golden Bough (mythology)
• Yama (Buddhism and Chinese mythology)

Notes

1. ^ Mike Dixon-Kennedy, following Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks (1951:230), in Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology , 1998:143: "his name means 'the unseen', a direct contrast to his brother Zeus, who was originally seen to represent the brightness of day"; Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, "Old Novgorodian Nevide, Russian nevidal’: Greek ἀίδηλος," citing Robert S.P. Beekes, "Hades and Elysion" in J. Jasanoff, et al., eds., Mír Curad: Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins, 1998. Beekes shows that Thieme’s derivation from *som wid- is semantically untenable. Analogously, the Hebrew word for the abode of the dead, Sheol, also literally means "unseen". Plato's Cratylus improvises extensively upon the etymology, with the character of Socrates asserting that the god's name is not from aiedes (unseen) as commonly thought, but rather from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things".
2. ^ Theoi Project: Haides
3. ^ Walter Burkert, in The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, 1992, (pp 90ff) compares this single reference with the Mesopotamian Atra-Hasis: "the basic structure of both texts is astonishingly similar." The drawing of lots is not the usual account; Hesiod (Theogony, 883) declares that Zeus overthrew his father and was acclaimed king by the other gods. "There is hardly another passage in Homer which comes so close to being a translation of an Akkadian epic," Burkert concludes (p. 91).
4. ^ Poseidon speaks: "For when we threw the lots I received the grey sea as my abode, Hades drew the murky darkness, Zeus, however, drew the wide sky of brightness and clouds; the earth is common to all, and spacious Olympus." Iliad 15.187
5. ^ The name Eubouleos is more often seen as an epithet for Dionysus or Zeus.
6. ^ "Hades never knows what is happening in the world above, or in Olympus, except for fragmentary information which comes to him when mortals strike their hands upon the earth and invoke him with oaths and curses" (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths 1960: §31.e).
7. ^ Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks 1951:231.
8. ^ Heraclitus, encountering the festival of the Phallophoria, in which phalli were paraded about, remarked in a surviving fragment: "If they did not order the procession in honor of the god and address the phallus song to him, this would be the most shameless behavior. But Hades is the same as Dionysos, for whom they rave and act like bacchantes" (quoted in Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life [Princeton University Press, 1976] pp239f.).
9. ^ Kerenyi 1967, p. 40.
10. ^ Kerenyi, C. (1967). Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01915-0; Kerenyi 1976). Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton University Press.
11. ^ The Rape of Persephone Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples, Italy
12. ^ Vermeule, Emily (1958-12-01). "Mythology in Mycenaean Art". The Classical Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3: pp. 97–108. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-8353(195812)54%3A3%3C97%3AMIMA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I. Retrieved 2007-10-21. 
13. ^ Guirand, Felix, Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, (Batchworth Press Limited) 1959: 190.
14. ^ ^{a b} Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 370ff.
15. ^ Guirand, Felix, Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology', (Batchworth Press Limited), 1959: 175.
16. ^ Guirand, Felix, Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Batchworth Press Limited, 1959: 176.
17. ^ Homeric Hymn to Demeter
18. ^ Aeneid, book 6.
19. ^ Sibylline Oracles I, 101–3
20. ^ Not on the eyes; all literary sources specify the mouth. Callimachus, Hecale fragment 278 in R. Pfeiffer's text Callimachus (Oxford UP, 1949), vol.2, p. 262; now ordered as fragment 99 by A.S.D. Hollis, in his edition, Callimachus: Hecale (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1990), pp. 284f., from the Suidas, English translation online, specifying the mouth, also Etymologicum Graecum ("Danakes"). See also Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, entry on "Charon" online for placement in the mouth, though archaeology disproves Smith's statement that every corpse was given a coin; see article on Charon's obol.
21. ^ Revelation 1:18, 6:8, Rev 20:13–14
22. ^ ^{a b} New Bible Dictionary 3rd edition, IVP Leicester 1996. "Sheol".
23. ^ Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals (2000). The Nature of Hell. Acute, Paternoster (London). 
24. ^ Catholic for a Reason, edited by Scott Hahn & Leon Suprenant, copyright 1998 by Emmaus Road Publishing, Inc., chapter by Curtis Martin, pg 294-295]

External links

Maps of the Underworld (Greek mythology)

• Color map
• Ancient map

The God Hades

• Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades by Flavius Josephus
• Theoi Project, Hades references in classical literature and ancient art
• Greek Mythology Link, Hades