Myth · Greek

Hades

Greek mythology — Olympian brother, lord of the underworld

Hades is the eldest brother of Zeus and Poseidon and lord of the dead, ruling the underworld that took his name after the three brothers divided the cosmos by lot. He is not a devil but a stern, just and immovable king: he keeps what is his, and almost no one who enters leaves. The Greeks avoided naming him, preferring the euphemism Plouton, "the wealthy one", since the earth's riches — metals, and the seed that returns as grain — come from below.

How to spot them

▸The helm of darkness, which makes its wearer invisible; the bident or sceptre; Cerberus at his feet
▸Euphemistic names Plouton ('the rich') and Klymenos ('the famous'); called 'Zeus of the underworld'
▸Drew the underworld when three brothers cast lots for the cosmos
▸Almost no temples and almost no myths outside one abduction

Stories & episodes

Rose through a chasm in a Sicilian meadow to seize a girl gathering flowers

The abduction told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the one great myth in which he acts.

Lent a helmet of invisibility to the slayer of Medusa

The kunee, cap of darkness, made by the Cyclopes and used by Perseus and others.

Fixed two would-be kidnappers to a chair of forgetfulness

Theseus and Pirithous came to carry off his queen; Heracles freed only Theseus.

Set Sisyphus to roll a boulder and left Tantalus thirsting in water

The exemplary punishments of his realm, described in Odyssey 11.

His three-headed watchdog was hauled up alive as a hero's twelfth labour

Heracles took Cerberus to Tiryns and brought him back.

Wounded by an arrow at Pylos, he went up to Olympus to be healed

Heracles shot him; Paeon dressed the wound, in Iliad 5.

Turned a nymph his queen had trampled into the mint plant

Minthe, whose name survives in the herb.

Key ideas

His name is used far more often of the place than the person: in Homer 'the house of Hades' is the realm, and the god's own cult is almost invisible
As Plouton he is a god of agricultural wealth as well as death — the same earth that swallows the dead returns the grain

Quick-fire facts

•Roman equivalents: Pluto (from the Greek Plouton) and the older Dis Pater, 'rich father'
•Eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, swallowed first and disgorged last
•Husband of Persephone, whom he carried off with the connivance of Zeus
•His realm is bounded by five rivers: Styx, Acheron, Lethe, Phlegethon and Cocytus; Charon ferries the dead across for an obol
•The judges of the dead are Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus
•He has almost no temples; a rare one at Elis was opened a single day a year
•Black sheep were sacrificed to him, the sacrificer turning his face away
•Cerberus, his watchdog, is usually three-headed in art but fifty-headed in Hesiod's Theogony
•The dwarf planet Pluto, named in 1930 after a suggestion by the eleven-year-old Venetia Burney, carries his Roman name, and plutonium is named after the planet
•The Elysian Fields and Tartarus lie within his realm — the blessed and the damned

Drill it — 10 cards

1 / 10new card

Sources

Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Haides
Homeric Hymn to Demeter The abduction of Persephone and the bargain over the pomegranate