Hades

Hades, in ancient Greek religion, god of the underworld. Hades was a son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, and brother of the deities Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, Hera, and Hestia.

After Cronus was overthrown by his sons, his kingdom was divided among them, and the underworld fell by lot to Hades. There he ruled with his queen, Persephone, over the infernal powers and over the dead in what was often called “the house of Hades,” or simply Hades. He was aided by the dog Cerberus. Though Hades supervised the trial and punishment of the wicked after death, he was not normally one of the judges in the underworld, nor did he personally torture the guilty, a task assigned to the Furies (Erinyes). Hades was depicted as stern and pitiless, unmoved by prayer or sacrifice (like death itself). Forbidding and aloof, he never quite emerges as a distinct personality from the shadowy darkness of his realm, not even in the myth of his abduction of Persephone.

Those dark and unknowable aspects were complemented by an opposite and beneficial aspect. The god of the underworld was usually worshipped under a euphemistic epithet such as Clymenus (“the Renowned”) or Eubouleus (“Good Counsellor”). He was often called Zeus with the addition of a special title (e.g., chthonios, “chthonian Zeus”). His title Pluto or Pluton (“Wealth”) may have originated through Hades’ partial amalgamation with a god of the earth’s fertility or because he gathered all living things into his treasury at death.

In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the word Hades is used for Sheol, denoting a dark region of the dead. Tartarus, originally denoting an abyss far below Hades and the place of punishment in the lower world, later lost its distinctness and became almost a synonym for Hades.