Hades
 Hades  (Greek, idea)   | |
|---|---|
| Mythological King of the Underworld |
Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and mythology, is the God of the Dead and Riches and the King of the Underworld, with which his name became synonymous.[1]
Background
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, overthrew, and replaced their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed joint sovereignty over the cosmos.
Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, which was long the domain 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 at his side.
Roman-era mythographers eventually equated the Etruscan god Aita, and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus, with Hades, and merged all these figures into Pluto, a Latinisation of Plouton meaning "the rich one" often given to Hades.[2]
Origin
The origin of Hades's name is uncertain but has generally been seen as meaning "the unseen one" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogue Cratylus is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things".
Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides ("unseen"). The earliest attested form is Aḯdēs, which lacks the proposed digamma. Martin Litchfield West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death.
References
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