Hades
（
Ἅιδης). According to the belief current among the
Greeks, the world of the dead, or the abode of Hades, with its wide doors, was in the depths
of the earth. In the
Odyssey, its entrance and outer court were on the western
side of the river Oceanus, in the ground sacred to Persephoné, with its grove of
barren willows and poplars. Here was the home of the Cimmerians, veiled in darkness and cloud,
where the sun never shines. This court, and indeed the lower world in general, is a meadow of
asphodel, an unattractive weed of dreary aspect usually planted on graves. The actual abode of
the subterranean powers is Erebus (
Ἔρεβος), or the
impenetrable darkness. In later times entrances to the lower world were imagined in other
places where there were cavernous hollows which looked as if they led into the bowels of the
earth. Such places were Hermioné and the promontory of Taenarum in the
Peloponnesus, Heraclea on the Euxine, and Cumae in Italy, where the mythical Cimmerii were
also localized. The lower world of Homer is intersected by great rivers—the Styx,
Acheron (“river of woe”), Cocytus (“river of
wailing”), a branch of the Styx, Phlegethon and Pyriphlegethon (“rivers of
fire”). The last two unite and join the waters of the Acheron. In the post-Homeric
legend, these rivers are represented as surrounding the infernal regions, and another river
appears with them, that of Lethé, or oblivion. In the waters of Lethé
the souls of the dead drank forgetfulness of their earthly existence. The lower world once
conceived as separated from the upper by these rivers, the idea of a ferryman arose. This was
Charon (q.v.), the son of Erebus and of Nyx, a
gloomy, sullen old man, who took the souls in his boat across Acheron into the realm of
shadows. The souls were brought down from the upper world by Hermes, and paid the ferryman an
obolus, which was put for this purpose into the mouths of the dead. Charon had the right to
refuse a passage to souls whose bodies had not been duly buried. (See
Funus, p. 697.) In Homer it is the spirits themselves who refuse to
receive any one to whom funeral honours have not been paid. At the gate lies the dog Cerberus,
son of Typhaon and Echidna. He is a terrible monster with three heads, and mane and tail of
snakes. He is friendly to the spirits who enter, but if any one tries to escape he seizes him
and holds him fast.
The ghosts of the dead were in ancient times conceived as incorporeal images of their former
selves, without mind or consciousness. In the
Odyssey the seer Tiresias is the
only one who has retained his consciousness and judgment, and this as an exceptional gift of
Persephoné. But they have the power of drinking the blood of animals, and having
done so they recover their consciousness and power of speech. The soul, therefore, is not conceived as entirely annihilated. The ghosts retain the outer form of
their body, and follow, but instinctively only, what was their favourite pursuit in life.
Orion in Homer is still a hunter, Minos sits in judgment, as when alive. Perhaps the
punishments inflicted in Homer on Tityus, Tantalus, and Sisyphus (Ixion, the Danaides,
Pirithoüs, and others belong to a later story) should be regarded in this light. The
penalties inflicted on them in the upper world may be merely transferred by Homer to their
ghostly existence; for the idea of a sensible punishment is not consistent with that of an
unconscious continuance in being. It must be remembered, at the same time, that Homer several
times mentions that the Erinyes punish perjurers after death. It must be concluded, then, that
the ancient belief is, in this instance, found side by side with the later and generally
received idea that the dead, even without drinking blood, preserved their consciousness and
power of speech. Connected with it is the notion that they have the power of influencing men's
life on earth in various ways. The most ancient belief knows nothing of future rewards of the
righteous, or, indeed, of any complete separation between the just and the unjust, or of a
judgment to make the necessary awards. The judges of the dead are in the later legend Minos,
Rhadamanthys, Aeacus, and Triptolemus. It was a later age, too, which transferred Elysium and
Tartarus to the lower world—Elysium as the abode of the blessed, and Tartarus as
that of the damned. In the earlier belief these regions had nothing to do with the realm of
Hades. The name Tartarus (
Τάρταρος) was in later times often
applied to the whole of the lower world. The spirits of those who had lived a life of average
merit were imagined as wandering on the asphodel meadow. See in English literature the
Epic of Hades, by Lewis Morris, and
Ades, King of Hell, by
Buchanan.
In general it must be said that the ancient ideas of a future life were always subject to
considerable changes, owing to the influence of the doctrines taught in the mysteries, and the
representations of poets, philosophers, sculptors, and painters. (See
Polygnotus.) The general tendency was to multiply the terrors of Hades,
especially at the gates and in Tartarus. (For the deities of the lower world, see
Eumenides;
Hades;
Persephoné.) The Greek
beliefs on the subject found their way to Rome through the instrumentality of the poets,
especially Vergil; but they did not entirely supplant the national traditions. See Alger,
Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, with an exhaustive
bibliography of the subject
(10th ed. Boston, 1880); Ettig,
Acheruntica (Leipzig, 1891); and the articles
Lares;
Larvae;
Manes;
Mania;
Orcus.
