Hades
Tartarus is also the home of "deadly Night," who "brings Sleep, / Brother of Death, and carries him in her arms." Hades is not to be confused with Night, Sleep, or Death, although he is associated with all three. The Romans were fearful to speak his name and so referred to him as "Dis," meaning "the Rich One." Since Hades's home was beneath the earth, where all stones, metals, ores, and minerals lay hid, it was popularly assumed that Hades possessed great wealth. (For this and other reasons, the Devil, in medieval mythology--including Dante's Inferno-- is sometimes referred to by the name of "Dis.") To understand this association is to understand why the Romans conflated Hades with Plutus, the son of Demeter, and called him Pluto. Because Hades governs his kingdom so well, very little is known about him. Those who have met him do not, generally, return with tales. Hesiod, the author that one might expect to say a good deal about Hades, is more interested in his "monstrous dog":
Unspeakable Cerberus, who eats raw flesh, |
Hades, the Invisible and the Receiver of Many, is one of the three surviving sons of Rhea and Cronus. Homer, in the Iliad,
tells of how the brothers, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, divided the universe between themselves after
their conquest over the Titans. To Hades fell the region of the Underworld, and there, along
with his wife, Persephone, and faithful dog, Cerberus, he reigns supreme over all the spirits
of the dead. "Misty Tartarus, as far beneath / The earth, as earth is far beneath the heavens," is,
thus, the House of Hades.