The gate of the year

Statue of Hades, aside with his three-headed dog, Cerberus, artwork of Roman age (180-190 A.D.), from Gortyna, on the island of Crete, now in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Greece. Hades was the ruler of the Underworld and of the Dead. According to Homer, Zeus divided the domain on the world with his two brothers: maintaining for himself the lordship of the sky, he granted to Poseidon control over the sea and to Hades (who was also designated with the epithet of Zeus Katakthónios) the reign of the Underworld (Iliad, XV, 187-193). Hades, whose name originally meant “the Invisible One”, “Unseen”, was called “Lord of many”, because he was the ruler of the innumerable swarm of the dead. To him, very few temples or cult places were dedicated; caves and subterranean cavities were sacred to the god, as well as volcanoes and hot springs, because they were regarded as entries to the Underworld. In the myth, he was the abductor of Persephone, who became his partner and Lady of the Underworld (Bremmer 2005a).
With the term of Hades, the Greeks referred also to the world of the dead itself, which was described as a dim and sinister reign, populated by ghosts and shadows of the dead. Thus Achilles addresses Odysseus, portraying the world of the dead: “How didst thou dare to come down to Hades, where dwell the unheeding dead, the phantoms of men outworn” (Odyssey, XI, 475-476). They are called aphrades, “insensate, reckless”, but also “without sense, senseless”, with reference to the existence of the dead (Liddell-Scott, s.v.). The vision which appears to Odysseus’s eyes, when he spread on the ground the blood of the sacrificed animals, to evoke the spirit of the prophet Tiresias, was made by a crowd of “the spirits of those that are dead”, who huddled to drink the blood thrown in the sacrificial pit: “brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender maidens […] and many that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears”, thronging about the pit “with a wondrous cry” (XI, 36-43).

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hades%26cerberus-AviadBublil.JPG]




World of the Dead

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Statue of Hades, aside with his three-headed dog, Cerberus, artwork of Roman age (180-190 A.D.), from Gortyna, on the island of Crete, now in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Greece. Hades was the ruler of the Underworld and of the Dead. According to Homer, Zeus divided the domain on the world with his two brothers: maintaining for himself the lordship of the sky, he granted to Poseidon control over the sea and to Hades (who was also designated with the epithet of Zeus Katakthónios) the reign of the Underworld (Iliad, XV, 187-193). Hades, whose name originally meant “the Invisible One”, “Unseen”, was called “Lord of many”, because he was the ruler of the innumerable swarm of the dead. To him, very few temples or cult places were dedicated; caves and subterranean cavities were sacred to the god, as well as volcanoes and hot springs, because they were regarded as entries to the Underworld. In the myth, he was the abductor of Persephone, who became his partner and Lady of the Underworld (Bremmer 2005a). With the term of Hades, the Greeks referred also to the world of the dead itself, which was described as a dim and sinister reign, populated by ghosts and shadows of the dead. Thus Achilles addresses Odysseus, portraying the world of the dead: “How didst thou dare to come down to Hades, where dwell the unheeding dead, the phantoms of men outworn” (Odyssey, XI, 475-476). They are called aphrades, “insensate, reckless”, but also “without sense, senseless”, with reference to the existence of the dead (Liddell-Scott, s.v.). The vision which appears to Odysseus’s eyes, when he spread on the ground the blood of the sacrificed animals, to evoke the spirit of the prophet Tiresias, was made by a crowd of “the spirits of those that are dead”, who huddled to drink the blood thrown in the sacrificial pit: “brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender maidens […] and many that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears”, thronging about the pit “with a wondrous cry” (XI, 36-43). [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hades%26cerberus-AviadBublil.JPG]