Hell Pt 1
The Ancient Greek View
Underworld The underworld is hidden in the earth. It is the kingdom of the dead and ruled over by Hades. Hades is a greedy god who is greatly concerned with increasing his subjects. Those whose calling increase the number of dead are seen favorably. The Erinnyes are welcomed guests. He is exceedingly disinclined to allow any of his subjects leave. For most, life in the underworld is not particularly unpleasant. It is rather like a miserable dream, full of shadows, without sunlight or hope. A joyless place where the dead slowly fade into nothingness. Geographically, the underworld is surrounded by a series of rivers: The Acheron (river of woe), The Cocytus (river of lamentation), The Phlegethon (river of fire), The Styx (river of unbreakable oath by which the gods swear), and The Lethe (river of forgetfulness). Once across the rivers an adamantine gate, guarded by Cerberus, forms the entrance to the kingdom. Deep within the kingdom is Hades vast palace, complete with many guests. Upon death a soul is lead by Hermes to the entrance of the underworld and the ferry across the Acheron. There is a single ferry run by Charon to take the souls across the river. Only those who can pay the fare, with coins placed on their lips when buried, receive passage. The rest are trapped between two worlds. The souls then enter through the gates. Cerberus will allow all to enter but, none to leave. The souls then appear before a panel of three judges, Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Aeacus, who pass sentence. The very good go to the Elysian Fields. Others are singled out for special treatment. Sisyphus and Tantalus being prime examples of the later. Hades (/ˈheɪdiːz/; from Ancient Greek Ἅιδης/ᾍδης, Hāidēs; Doric Ἀΐδας Aidas) was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. Eventually, the god's name came to designate the abode of the dead. In Greek mythology, Hades is the oldest male child of Cronus and Rhea considering the order of birth from the mother, or the youngest, considering the regurgitation by the father. The latter view is attested in Poseidon's speech in the Iliad.[1] 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. Later the Greeks started referring to the god as Plouton (see below), 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. He is often pictured with the three-headed dog Cerberus. In the later mythological tradition, though not in antiquity, he is associated with the Helm of Darkness and the bident. The term hades in Christian theology (and in New Testament Greek) is parallel to Hebrew sheol (שאול, "grave, 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.
As with almost every name for the gods, the origin of Hades's name is obscure. The name as it came to be known in classical times was Ἅιδης, Hāidēs. Later the iota became silent.[3]
Originally it was *Awides which has been claimed to mean "unseen".[4] This changed into Ἀΐδης, Aïdēs (and afterwards Āïdēs), with the dropping of the digamma. This Ionic and epic form of the name is the one used in epic poetry.[5]
Plato's Cratylus speculates extensively upon the etymology, with the character of Socrates asserting that the god's name is not from aeides (unseen) as was commonly thought at the time, but rather from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things". Others have interpreted it as "the one who presides over meeting up" (in the sense that he is the lord of the place everyone comes to inhabit at the end of his life).[6]
Poetic variants of the name include Ἀϊδωνεύς, Aïdōneus, and *Ἄϊς, Aïs (a nominative by conjecture), from which the derived forms Ἄϊδος, Āïdos, Ἄϊδι, Āïdi, and Ἄϊδα, Āïda, (gen., dat. and acc., respectively) are words commonly seen in poetry.[7]
From fear of pronouncing his name and considering that from the abode below (i.e. the soil) come the riches (e.g. from the soil grow the fertile crops, from the soil come the metals and so on), c. 5th century BCE the Greeks started referring to Hades as Πλούτων, Ploutōn,[8] a name that is an abbreviation of Πλουτοδότης, Ploutodotēs, or Πλουτοδοτήρ, Ploutodotēr, meaning "giver of wealth".[9]
Epithets of Hades include Agesander (Άγήσανδρος) and Agesilaos (Άγεσίλαος),[10] both from agein (ἆγειν, "fetch" or "carry") and anēr (ἀνήρ, "man") or laos (λαός, "men" or "people"), describing Hades as the god who carries away all.[11][12][13][14] Nicander uses the form Hegesilaus (Ἡγεσίλαος).[15]
n Greek mythology, Hades 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. 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[16] for realms to rule. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon got the seas, and Hades received the underworld,[17] 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 trickery and violent abduction. The myth, particularly as represented in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, connected the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon. 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
In older Greek myths, the realm of Hades is the misty and gloomy[32] 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.[33] By synecdoche, "Avernus" could be substituted for the underworld as a whole. The di inferi were a collective of underworld divinities. 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.[34]
