We sometimes refer to the Olympian deities, who generally have no contact with the underworld, as ouranic, or ‘‘of the sky.’’ These deities’ functions involved the upper world and the living. Usually ouranic deities did not venture to Hades, but there were exceptions. Dionysus went to retrieve his mother Semele from the dead, for example (Clark 1979: 99-108). And sometimes Olympians such as Hermes, one of whose roles was to accompany the souls of the dead to Hades, earned the epithet Cthonios, or chthonic, ‘‘of the earth.’’ Deities whose functions included the earth itself (such as agriculture), or whose functions involved the dead, were considered chthonic. Thus Demeter, too, had a chthonic aspect as a fertility goddess, since seeds are planted in the earth and were seen as representing death and renewal (burial and rebirth), and so she was sometimes referred to as Chthonia. And deities who dwelled in the underworld and rarely ventured outside it are regularly referred to as chthonic. Ceremonies of worship for ouranic and chthonic deities reflected the contrasts of light and dark, living and dead, above and below the earth. Those for ouranic deities were usually performed in daylight on high altars, directed upwards toward the sky, but since chthonic deities were believed to reside in the earth, sacrifices to them were generally performed at night, directed down into the earth. Liquid offerings of milk, blood, or honey were poured into low altars or pits. Also, the animals sacrificed to ouranic deities were usually white, whereas those sacrificed to chthonic deities were black (Burkert 1985:199).
Chthonic deities included Hades himself, Lord of the Underworld, whose main foray above ground was his abduction of Persephone, who became his wife. She, too, is considered chthonic, although she spent part of each year with her mother Demeter and other Olympians. Hades, though he ruled over the souls of the dead underground, did not cause death, did not take souls, and was not an equivalent to the Christian Satan: Hades was not a fallen angel, was not evil, and did not lead mortals into sin. Likewise, the eponymous kingdom of Hades was not Hell; it was a Land of the Dead, a place for the souls of the deceased - at least for those of them who had been buried properly. Hades and Persephone ruled over what is, in many accounts, a relatively gloomy place, guarded by monstrous creatures and inhabited by incorporeal souls of the dead.
Hades, unlike the Olympians, had virtually no cult following. There were no grand temples to Hades, no giant cult statues. His only real worship site seems to have been in southern Greece, where the Eleans had built a temple to him, and at Mount Minthe near Elis was a temenos, or piece of land set apart as sacred to Hades (Pausanias 6.25.2; Strabo 8.3.14-15). Hades rarely appears as a major character in myths. He was depicted far less in Greek art than his Olympian siblings (Garland 2001:53). Hades was feared more than he was worshiped, because of the Greeks’ uncertainty about what death meant, when death would come for each of them, and whether it was final. In other words, they feared what Hades represented. In any case, the Greeks seemed reluctant to call upon Hades by name and often used a euphemism, Plouton, or, ‘‘The Rich One,’’ probably because the fertility of the earth provided men with sustenance, and men preferred to think of Hades in this incarnation, a spirit of the earth’s fertility, rather than as a god of the dreaded dead. Hades’ main job as ruler of the underworld was to ensure that the dead and living stayed in their appropriate places in the world, i. e. that the living did not enter Hades and the dead did not leave. In the few instances when a living person journeyed to Hades, Persephone helped Hades carry out his function. For example, when Alcestis willingly died in place of her husband, Admetus, Persephone sent her back to the living, believing that she should not have died and did not belong in Hades (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.15). In some myths, however, Persephone also facilitates temporary contact between the dead and the living, as in the Odyssey, where she sends forth the wives and daughters of noble lords to drink from the pit of blood and speak to Odysseus (11.225-9).
If Hades did not cause death, who did? The Greeks had no agent of death, no major mythological figure equivalent to the Judeo-Christian Angel of Death. The figure of Death himself was not a major character in underworld mythology. Thanatos, Death personified, is rarely mentioned in Greek literature, and when he is his twin brother Hypnos, Sleep, usually accompanies him. Perhaps their most famous appearance is in the Iliad, where Zeus orders them to carry the body of his son Sarpedon, slain in battle, home to Lycia (16.667-83). This Thanatos is not a fearful figure but rather swift and gentle. Thanatos also appears as a character in Euripides’ Alcestis to claim the queen, but in this version of the story Heracles beats Thanatos in a wrestling match and brings Alcestis back to the living. Unlike Death in other world mythologies, Death in Greek myth and religion rarely has an active role and does not kill people or take their souls. Rather, the soul, or psyche, envisioned as a small winged creature, departs the body on its own at the moment of death and wings its way to Hades. Thanatos and Hypnos might accompany the soul to Hades, but more often Hermes serves this function in his role of psychopomp, ‘‘conductor of souls.’’
Other cthnonic deities helped Hades keep his kingdom in order. Among these was Hecate, an underworld goddess who, though initially benign (Hesiod, Theogony 40952) became closely associated with restless souls, such as the spirits of people who had died violently rather than dying of natural causes. Hecate was believed to control such souls - to restrain them or let them loose, as circumstances demanded (Johnston 1999a:204-5). Because of this power, Hecate became the patron goddess of magicians and of such sorceresses as Medea, who appealed to her for help with spells. Hecate appeared late at night, fearful to see, accompanied by monstrous dogs and carrying torches to light her way. She was associated with crossroads, liminal locations particularly conducive to magic, and statues and other votive offerings were often left at such places in her honor. Perhaps even more menacing than Hecate were the Erinyes. Born from the earth where drops from the blood of Uranus’ castration fell, they were believed to reside beneath the earth (e. g., Iliad 19.259-60). The Erinyes, female spirits, punished those who had offended blood kin. The Erinyes most frequently took revenge on children who had murdered their mothers or had committed other crimes against their parents. Their best-known appearance in Greek literature is probably in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, where they hound Orestes for the murder of his mother Clytemnestra until they drive him insane. At least one of the
Erinyes did the same to Alcmeon for killing his mother, Eriphyle (Apollodorus, Library 3.7.5).
Ancient Greek conceptions of Hades’ kingdom, and the place of these various personnel in it, varied over time and location. Although we commonly refer to the ancient Greek concept of the land of the dead as the ‘‘underworld,’’ not all descriptions place Hades literally under the ground. In the earliest recorded account, that in the Odyssey., Hades was imagined to be not under the ground but across the ocean, and Odysseus beaches his ship there, heading inland to sacrifice to and make contact with the dead (11.13-22). By the sixth century, however, the realm of Hades was regularly described as underground, and by the fifth century most of the now familiar elements of Hades’ kingdom were set. Since Hades’ main job was to keep the living and dead in their separate places, the topography of his domain was organized accordingly. The entrance to Hades’ underground realm was unknown to mortals, though several grottos in various locations around Greece and southern Italy claimed to be home to the entrance, such as Cape Taenarum in the southern Peloponnese, and Lake Avernus near Naples. As many as five rivers flowed around and through Hades, the river Styx (‘‘Hateful’’) being the primary current and most often described as the main boundary of Hades, separating the living from the dead. The other rivers included the Acheron (‘‘Woe’’); the Cocytus (‘‘Wailing’’); the Phlegethon (‘‘Flaming’’), a river of flames; and the Lethe (‘‘Forgetfulness’’ or ‘‘Oblivion’’). The dead who arrived in Hades and drank from Lethe forgot their former lives and lost their sorrow.
To help ensure that there was a definite and distinct separation between the living and the dead, after souls were accompanied to the boundary of the underworld by Hermes they had to cross the river Styx. The soul’s symbolic crossing of water may have represented the crossing from consciousness into unconsciousness, life into death, or at least life into an unknown state. Souls could not cross by themselves, but needed the help of Charon, the boatman who ferried souls across the Styx. Charon was sometimes thought of as a rather monstrous, fearsome creature (possibly because of his Etruscan counterpart, the frightening Charun; Garland 2001:56), but in much of fifth-century Greek art and literature he was depicted simply as an old man somewhat unhappy with his job (e. g., Euripides, Alcestis 252-9; Aristophanes, Frogs 138-40, 180-269). The crossing was not free; the dead had to pay Charon one obol. Souls that could not pay were forbidden to cross into Hades and left in a kind of limbo. Because of this, the Greeks customarily buried the dead with a coin in their mouths or hands, as described above. Once across the Styx and freed from the no doubt unpleasant company of Charon, souls were confronted by Cerberus, a monstrous dog who guarded the entrance to Hades’ kingdom. Hesiod ascribed fifty heads to Cerberus (Theogony 312), but later tradition settled on three. Cerberus’ job was to help Hades and Persephone prevent unauthorized souls from entering or leaving Hades, though the creature was sometimes surprisingly ineffectual, as on more than one occasion living men managed to infiltrate Hades.
Greek literature as early as Homer included the concept of punishment or honor after death, depending on whether one had offended the gods or led a pious life; that is, your behavior in this life determined your fate in the next life. Thus, once admitted to Hades, the dead had to face judgment. The earliest judge in Hades was Minos ( Odyssey 11.568). Rhadamanthys, described by Homer as ruler of Elysium (Odyssey 4.561), eventually became another judge, and in the fourth century Plato’s addition of Aeacus brought the number of judges to three {Apology 41a; Gorgias 523e-524a). All were famous during their lives for being lawgivers, and their job was to assign souls to the appropriate places within Hades, deciding whether each soul would be rewarded or punished. Those to be rewarded were assigned to Elysium which, in the earliest Greek literature (Homer and Hesiod), was imagined to be separate from Hades, and was reserved for mortals related to the gods and for heroes who had fought and died gloriously in battles such as the Trojan War. By the fifth century Elysium was described as a part of Hades itself, as a place where the souls of the good were rewarded by leading enjoyable afterlives.
Souls of those who had offended the gods did not enjoy a pleasant afterlife in Hades, however. In Homer’s Hades, where most of the dead mingle, such criminals are not confined to a separated location, but they are indeed punished {Odyssey 11.572-600). Criminals in Hades were relegated to Tartarus. Hesiod describes Tartarus as being ‘‘as far below earth as sky is above the earth’’ {Theogony 720-5), not a particularly helpful description, and the place is used as a prison for the Titans who fought against Zeus. But by the fifth century Tartarus had become a segment of Hades in which famous criminals were punished. Many of them were mortals who had been favored by the gods but then dared to challenge the immortals: one of the greatest offenses possible was for a mortal to exhibit hubris toward the gods. Tantalus, partly because he was a son of Zeus, was favored by the gods and often dined with them before being shunned by them. There are several different versions of the crime that landed him in Tartarus. In one, Tantalus abused the gods’ hospitality by stealing their nectar and ambrosia. In another, Zeus and other gods told him secrets, which he promptly revealed to other mortals. In the best-known version of Tantalus’ crime, though, he exhibited hubris by deciding to test the gods’ omniscience in a particularly gruesome manner. He invited them to a feast, cut up his own son, Pelops, and served him up to the gods in a stew. The gods weren’t fooled, and refused to eat the horrifying meal - all except Demeter, who inadvertently ate part of Pelops’ shoulder, distracted as she was by the loss of her daughter to Hades. Zeus restored Pelops to life, giving him an ivory shoulder to replace the missing one, and punished Tantalus by condemning him to an eternity of perpetual hunger and thirst, mirroring the nature of his crime. In Hades, then, Tantalus stood in a pool of water, but whenever he bent over to drink, the water receded; trees heavy with fruit hung overhead, but whenever he reached for them they moved out of his grasp - a punishment described as early as the Odyssey {11.582-92).
Another famous offender undergoing eternal punishment in Hades was Ixion, a mortal king who tried to seduce Hera. Zeus punished him by chaining him to an eternally revolving fiery wheel, which perhaps reflected his burning and uncontrollable lust. Sisyphus, too, was a mortal king, renowned for his cunning. In the most popular version of his crime and punishment, he betrayed Zeus by publicizing one of the god’s affairs. The god then condemned Sisyphus to spend eternity trying to push a huge boulder up a hill. Whenever Sisyphus neared the top, the boulder rolled back down, and Sisyphus had to retrieve it and begin again. Women as well as men were punished in Hades for their sins. The Danaides, daughters of king Danatis, killed their husbands on their wedding night. In the afterlife they were condemned to draw water for all eternity, as they were given leaky jars that could never remain filled. Although all the criminals in Hades described here are mythological characters, such stories reflected, at least in part, the Greek belief that a person was responsible for his (or her) behavior in this life, and that immoral acts did carry a price - if not in this life, then in the next.
World History
