Hades and Cerberus (License from Carole Raddato). (374k)
From the Hades entry in Wikipedia:
Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although this also made him the last son to be regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, available to all three concurrently. In artistic depictions, Hades is typically portrayed holding a bident and wearing his helm with Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, standing to his side.
The Etruscan god Aita and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to Hades and merged into Pluto, a Latinization of Plouton itself a euphemistic title often given to Hades.
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King of the Underworld, God of the dead and riches.
In Greek mythology, Hades, the god of the Greek underworld, was the first-born son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He had three older sisters, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, as well as a younger brother, Poseidon, all of whom had been swallowed whole by their father as soon as they were born. Zeus was the youngest child and through the machinations of their mother, Rhea, he was the only one that had escaped this fate. 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. 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 (Book XV, ln.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, and Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth.
Hades obtained his wife and queen, Persephone, through abduction at the behest of Zeus. This myth is the most important one Hades takes part in; it also connected the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon, particularly as represented in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is the oldest story of the abduction, most likely dating back to the beginning of the 6th century BCE. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not an unworthy groom or son-in-law given his status among the gods, as her own brother and king on his own right:
Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology. Hades was portrayed as passive and never portrayed negatively; his role was often maintaining relative balance. That said, he was also depicted as cold and stern, and he held all of his subjects equally accountable to his laws. Any other individual aspects of his personality are not given, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention.
Hades ruled the dead, assisted by others over whom he had complete authority. The House of Hades was described as full of "guests," though he rarely left the underworld. He cared little about what happened in the world above, as his primary attention was ensuring none of his subjects ever left his domain.
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. While usually indifferent to his subjects, Hades was very focused on the punishment of these two people; particularly Pirithous, as he entered the underworld in an attempt to steal Persephone for himself, and consequently was forced onto the "Chair of Forgetfulness". Another myth is about the Greek god Asclepius who was originally a demigod, son of Apollo and Coronis, a Thessalian princess. During his lifetime, he became a famous and talented physician, who eventually was able to bring the dead back to life. Feeling cheated, Plouton persuaded Zeus to kill him with a thunderbolt. After his death, he was brought to Olympus where he became a god. Hades was only depicted outside of the underworld once in myth, and even that is believed to have been an instance where he had just left the gates of the underworld, which was when Heracles shot him with an arrow as Hades was attempting to defend the city of Pylos. After he was shot, however, he traveled to Olympus to heal. Besides Heracles, the only other living people who ventured to the underworld were also heroes: Odysseus, Aeneas (accompanied by the Sibyl), Orpheus, to whom Hades showed uncharacteristic mercy at Persephone's urging, who was moved by Orpheus' music, 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:
The consort of Hades was Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Persephone did not submit to Hades willingly, but was abducted by him while picking flowers in the fields of Nysa (her father, Zeus, had previously given Persephone to Hades, to be his wife, as is stated in the first lines of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter). 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 and cause the gods to be deprived of their receiving gifts and sacrifices, Demeter asserted that the earth would remain barren until she saw her daughter again. Zeus then sends for his son, Hermes, and instructs him to go down to the underworld in hopes that he may be able to convince Hades to allow Persephone to return to Earth, so that Demeter might see Persephone and cause the famine to stop. Hermes obeys and goes down to Hades' realm, wherein he finds Hades seated upon a couch, Persephone seated next to him. Hermes relays Zeus' message, and Hades complies, saying,
Afterwards, Hades readies his chariot, but not before he secretly gives Persephone a pomegranate seed to eat; Hermes takes the reins, and he and Persephone make their way to the Earth above, coming to a halt in front of Demeter's temple at Eleusis, where the goddess has been waiting. Demeter and Persephone run towards each other and embrace one another, happy that they are reunited. Demeter, however, suspects that Persephone may have eaten food while down in the underworld, and so she questions Persephone, saying:
Persephone does admit that she ate the food of the dead, as she tells Demeter that Hades gave her a pomegranate seed and forced her to eat it. Persephone's eating the pomegranate seed binds her to Hades and the underworld, much to the dismay of Demeter. Zeus, however, had previously proposed a compromise, to which all parties had agreed: of the year, Persephone would spend one third with her husband. It is during this time, when Persephone is down in the underworld with her husband, that winter falls upon the earth, "an aspect of sadness and mourning."
The hero Orpheus once descended into the Underworld in search of his late wife Eurydice, who died when a snake bit her. So lovely was the music he played that it charmed even Hades (as well as his wife Persephone), who allowed him to take Eurydice to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back at her on his way out.
In another story, 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.
Sisyphus was a mortal king from Corinth who was punished in Tartarus for revealing to the river god Asopus the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina after Zeus abducted her, and for trying to cheat death as well. Zeus, angry at Sisyphus for revealing the secret, sent Thanatos to Sisyphus, but he cleverly cast Death into his own bonds, and as a result no one could die until Ares freed Thanatos and delivered Sisyphus to him. But still, Sisyphus ordered his wife Merope not to perform any funeral rites for him and what else was accustomed as tribute to the Underworld gods before he was brought to Hades. After some time that Merope had not offered proper honors, Hades learned of this, and allowed Sisyphus to return to the world of the living so that he could punish his wife, with the understanding that he would return afterwards. Sisyphus, however, never returned as promised until years later, when he died of old age. Hades punished Sisyphus by making him roll a boulder up a hill in the Underworld; but every time he reached the top, the boulder would roll down again and again. In another version, it is Persephone who lets him out.
Heracles' final labor 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 did not harm Cerberus. When Heracles dragged the dog out of Hades, he passed through the cavern Acherusia. In the myth of Admetus and Alcestis, after Alcestis chose to die in place of her husband Admetus in order to save him, Heracles brought her back from the dead by fighting and defeating Hades. In other versions, like Euripides' play Alcestis, Heracles fought Thanatos instead. At another time, Heracles sieged the town of Pylos and during the fight he wounded Hades, who had sided with the Pylians. In great pain, Hades went to Olympus to be healed by the physician of the gods, Paean.
Leuce was the most beautiful of the nymphs and a daughter of Oceanus. Hades fell in love with her and abducted her to the Underworld. She lived out the span of her life in his realm, and when she died, the god sought consolation by creating a suitable memorial of their love: in the Elysian Fields where the pious spend their afterlife, he brought a white tree into existence. It was this tree with which Heracles crowned himself to celebrate his return from the underworld.
Minthe was a nymph of the river Cocytus who became Hades' mistress. A jealous Persephone trampled the nymph under her foot, transforming her into garden mint in the process. According to a scholiast on Nicander, Hades turned his dead lover into the mint herb after Persephone tore her into pieces for sleeping with him. In another version, Hades had kept Minthe as his mistress before he married Persephone, and set her aside afterwards. Minthe boasted of being more beautiful than Persephone, and that Hades would soon take her back. In anger over the hubris directed toward her daughter, Demeter trampled Minthe and turned her into mint.
Theophile was a girl who claimed that Hades loved her and that she was better than Persephone.
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