Hades was a little esteemed Greek god, as he was the king of the underworld where mortals ended up at the end of their lives. His myth, however, is also linked to the idea of ​​rebirth thanks to his wife Persephone.

The name Hades, which means «invisible», does complete justice to this disturbing god: beyond the prodigious helmet that hides him from the eyes of others as soon as he puts it on, Hades is invisible because he reigns in the underworld and has as subjects those who have already died.

Hades and the distribution of the universe

Hadeslike the rest of his Olympic brothers with the sole exception of the youngest, Zeushad a peculiar childhood: As soon as he was born, his father Cronus swallowed himnot out of gluttony, but out of fear that one of his children would dethrone him as lord of the universe.

Given their divine nature, neither Hades nor Poseidon, Hera, Demeter and Hestia died, so they grew and developed in their paternal stomach. And so it was until Zeus made his father regurgitate them. Needless to say, from that moment on, all of them decided that they would not go through the same ordeal again and that they were willing to fight to the end to preserve their freedom.

This is what they did in the Titanomachy, the war that pitted them against the gods of the previous generation, the Titans, and in which Hades distinguished himself by destroying its defenses without being seenthanks to the helmet that the Cyclopes, his allies, had forged for him.

When the hour of victory arrived, the three male brothers decided to divide the spheres of their power: Zeus, whose hierarchy no one disputed, got the sky; to Poseidon, the seas, and to Hades, the dark underworld. He left there.

Hades, god of a world of shadows

He kingdom of hades It wasn’t particularly fun, populated as it was by the spirits, the shadows, of those who were once living people. Most did not even remember who they had been, as they had drunk the waters of the river of oblivion, the Lethe, one of the five rivers that crossed the underworld. In it, Neither the good nor the bad were distinguished.except for those whose crimes had surpassed everything imaginable.

It was the case of Tantalusa king who he had killed his sonhad butchered him and stewed him, and He had offered it at a banquet to the godsjust to see if they noticed what meat that was before them.

Faced with such a display of depravity, Tantalus was condemned to suffer eternal hunger and thirstand to make the punishment even more cruel, he was surrounded by food and water that he could never eat or drink.

Hades and the abduction of Persephone

With a kingdom like that, it’s no wonder Hades had trouble finding a wife. But he did not let himself be intimidated and, enamored as he was with his niece Persephoneone day when she went out to pick flowers she caused the earth to open at her feet and kidnapped her.

Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. and the fertility of the fields. Logically, upon discovering the disappearance of her beloved daughter, Demeter set out to search for her all over the world. Not only that, but he placed a curse that the land would remain barren until he recovered it.

In the end, he found her in the underworld. Demeter tried to take her with her, but Hades refused to let her go. As to Persephone, it seems, had fallen in love with the god and she was rather willing to remain at his side.

Through the mediation of Zeus, a compromise was finally reached: Persephone would live with her mother half of the year and the other half with her husband.who, to ensure his return, made him eat some pomegranate seeds, a fruit that linked him forever to the world of the dead.

Thus, the months that Persephone spends with her mother correspond to those of spring and summer, when nature is fertile and generous, while those she spends with her husband are those of autumn and, above all, winter, when everything becomes barren and sterile.

Hades and the origin of mint

Except for Persephone, Hades is a god whose love affairs are hardly known. The myths speak of a relationship with Mind, daughter of one of the rivers of the underworldthe one of lamentations or Cocytus. Persephone, out of jealousy, transformed her into the mint plant.

Another feature that distinguishes him from the rest of the gods is that Hades had no offspringnot even Persephone, perhaps because the underworld, by definition, is sterile.

Myths about Hades and Persephone

Beyond the story of the rapture, the few myths in which Hades and Persephone appear They are related to the visits that some (living!) heroes made to the world of the dead.

The most famous is that of the singer Orpheus, who went down to that dark den in search of his beloved wife Eurydicekilled by a snake bite. It was said that he was capable of moving wild animals, trees and even rocks with his song. The kings of the underworld were no exception, who, moved, allowed Orpheus to take Eurydice back to the kingdom of the living. They only gave him one condition: that throughout the journey he never turned his face to look at her. Orpheus could not fulfill it and Eurydice sank back into the underworld.

Other heroes who visited the gloomy couple were Theseus and Pirithous. Their purpose was to kidnap none other than Persephone, whom Pirithous had decided to marry. It was a fiasco: Hades invited them to eat and, as soon as they sat down, both friends saw how snakes coiled around them and tied them to their chairs.

Also Heracles (the Hercules of the Romans) He went down to the underworld, in his case to fulfill one of the twelve tasks imposed by King Eurystheus of Mycenae: to obtain Cerberus, the terrifying three-headed dog with a snake tail who guarded the kingdom of the dead. On that trip, Heracles took the opportunity to free Theseus.

The cult of the god Hades: the mysteries of Eleusis

The status of god of the dead made him Hades was more feared than appreciated. The exception was Elis cityin the Peloponnese, which had Hades as a patron and a temple dedicated to him, although this was only opened once a year and had a single priest.

On the other hand, the triad formed by Hades, Persephone and Demeter It occupied a special place in a very ancient cult: the mysteries of Eleusisa city near Athens. According to myth, it was there that Demeter stopped searching for her daughter and taught humans the secrets of cereal cultivation.

The name “mysteries” is not gratuitous: the entire cult was surrounded by such well-preserved secrecy that hardly anything is known about it. The only thing that in it the cycle of life, death and regeneration was celebrated What lies behind the myth of those three gods.