Pluto (Hades)

Hades was son of Cronus and Rhea, and brother to Zeus and Poseidon

Cronus m. Rhea

Hestia Hades Poseidon Demeter Hera Zeus

He was the god of the Underworld and husband of Persephone (Proserpina)

The Abduction of Persephone

• Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter At the will

of Zeus, Hades abducted her, bursting through a cleft in the earth

The Abduction of Persephone, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

The Abduction of Persephone

• When Demeter found out, she spent a year lamenting, during which time the earth would not produce food

• She would have destroyed the entire human race by famine if Zeus had not noticed and convinced Hades to bring Persephone up from the murky depths

The Abduction of Persephone

Before she left, Hades fed a pomegranate seed to Persephone so that she would have to return to the Underworld for 1/3 of each year

The Abduction of Persephone

Upon the return of Persephone, Demeter restored the fertility of the Earth

The Return of Persephone, Frederic Leighton (1891)

The Abduction of Persephone

And so Persephone became the wife of Hades and the queen of the Underworld

The Realm of Hades

• The realm of Hades is the misty and gloomy abode of the dead, where all mortals go.

• All mortals are judged after death and are either rewarded or cursed.

• The earliest surviving account of the realm appears in Book xi of the Odyssey

The Realm of Hades

• The five rivers of the realm of Hades are:

• Acheron (the river of sorrow, or woe)• Cocytus (lamentation, or wailing)• Phlegethon (fire)• Lethe (oblivion, or forgetfulness)• Styx (hate), The Styx forms the

boundary between the upper and lower worlds.

The Realm of Hades

• It was a custom to bury the dead with a coin in the mouth to provide the ferryman Charon with his fare to cross the Acheron and Styx RiversCharon’s Crossing, Alexander Litovchenko

The Realm of Hades

The ferocious dog Cerberus, usually depicted with three heads, guards the entrance to the realm of the dead

Cerberus, by William Blake

The Realm of Hades

• In the Odyssey, it is vaguely implied that all mortals end up together pretty much in the same place, without distinction – the Asphodel Meadows

• A special ‘hell’ for sinners may also be implied, but these sinners are extraordinary figures of mythology that dared crimes against the gods

The Realm of Hades• In Book 6 of the Aeneid, Vergil paints

a clearer picture of the Underworld• After crossing the Acheron River,

Aeneas reaches a kind of neutral zone, the Asphodel Meadows, a place for the untimely dead (infants, unjustly condemned, victims of suicide, and unhappy lovers-- where Aeneas meets Dido)

The Realm of Hades

Aeneas and Sibyl in the Underworld, Jan Brueghel the Elder

The Realm of Hades

Beyond, the road divides and leads in two directions – to the right extends to Elysium, and the left leads to Tartarus

From here Aeneas and Sibyl move to the Fields of Mourning, reserved for warriors who fell in battle

The Realm of Hades

• There are three judges of the Underworld:

• Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus• Most myths held Minos as the judge

of those who had been given the death penalty on a false charge

He decides whether a soul should go to Elysium or Tartarus

The Realm of Hades

Once sentenced to Tartarus, Rhadamanthus would decide on the punishment for the damned

Other myths state that Rhadamanthus presided over the virtuous in Elysium

The Realm of Hades

• Tartarus is a gloomy pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld, encircled by the River Phlegethon (Fire)

Vergil’s Tartarus is not a hell just for heroic sinners of mythological antiquity; in it all who are guilty suffer punishment

Inhabitants of the Realm of Hades

• They were the fifty daughters of Danaus that were to marry the fifty sons of his twin brother Aegyptus

• They were ordered by their father to kill their husbands which they all did with the exception of one

• The punishment for the 49 who went through with the killings was to attempt in vain to carry water in containers that have no real bottoms

The Danaides

Inhabitants of the Realm of Hades

In an attempt to purify Ixion,’s sins Zeus received him as a guest, yet Ixion repaid by attempting to violate Hera

• Ixion was expelled from Olympus and was bound to a fiery wheel that would spin for eternity inTartarus

Ixion

Inhabitants of the Realm of Hades

Sisyphus was a king who outwitted Death and, for telling Zeus’ secret, was punished in the Underworld by rolling a huge stone up a hill forever

Sisyphus

Inhabitants of the Realm of Hades

Tantalus abused the privilege of eating with the gods-He invited the gods to dine with him and cut up his son and served the parts at a feast

His punishment was to suffer everlasting thirst and hunger in the Underworld

Tantalus

Inhabitants of the Realm of Hades

Tityus was a son of Zeus who was killed by Apollo for his attempt to rape Leto.He was punished in the Underworld by vultures devouring his liver forever

Tityus

• Elysium (the Elysian Fields) of the Underworld was the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous.

• The inhabitants of Vergil’s Paradise hold the typical ancient ethics: devotion to humankind, to country, to family, and to the gods