Hades and the Underworld

1.3”The kingdom of Hades was a neutral region reserved for the souls of people who deserved neither punishment nor reward upon death. The Greeks believed that Hades was drab and dull, but not necessarily painful” (Littleton 4).

Inferno is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy. There is no doubt that inferno is talking about the world of hell, which looks like Virgil’s Aeneid. In people’s mind, the under-earth world always seems dark and terrified. They also believe that most evil souls who do horrible and immoral things will go to hell after they die. Hell is the place that no people want to go to talk about. However, in Dante’s poem, hell is his first journey. He cannot avoid it to approach haven. Dante shows many vivid images of hell to readers and lead the readers to go through the journey with him. His inferno contains general facts of hell, which are evil people, horrible punishment, and eternal surfing, but it also involves an unexpected element that is love.

Also, Hades wasn’t forced to be evil, he had to be mean for his “job”.

The afterlife or Underworld as a residence for souls after death has been a very common theme in literature. This notion intrigues us, this concept of a state of being that once experienced cannot be shared. Yet we continue to envision what it might be like. The Underworld, as a place beneath the earth where souls go after death has been reimagined countless time, from early Greek epics, such as the Iliad and Odyssey to more modern sources like Dante’s Inferno. Although beliefs concerning the afterlife have evolved over the centuries, many of the concepts represented in early Greek and Latin poems are still believed today.

He was one of few to granted permission to return back to the living world (Carlos Parada, “Underworld and Afterlife”, 3). Many beasts and famous monsters from Greek myths resided here. The atmosphere is dark pale and disheartening. Every breath taken is melancholy and every thought is meaningless (Parada, 3). The description of the entrance is not meant for the torture of the entities, but simply the passage to your final destination. Upon arrival, the ferryman, Charon, takes payment for passage into the Underworld. He accepts coins possessed by the souls given to them by living who disposed of their body (Mark Cartwright, “Hades”, 2). Those not given a coin remain is the purgatory state before the entrance for eternity. Charon then guides the dead along the river Styx (Parada, 4). It is believed to be one of five rivers that occupy the Underworld. The Acheron, Lethe, Phlegethon, Cocytus, and Styx compose of the major rivers (Linda Alchin, “River Styx”, 2). There are an abundant supply of guards who insure no entities escape from the gates go the Underworld. Cerberus, for example, is described as a enormous three headed hound; infamous for his irascible nature (Parada, 5). Further along, now traversing on the river, a more vivid picture of the landscape can be drawn. The Underworld is situated is a ill-lit chasm where anything sustaining refrains from growing (Parada,

As a young child, you are taught that the underworld is a place for anyone that did wrong when they were living. We were also taught that it was a blazing inferno down there for those people.

On their way to underworld, Hades tries to discourage them from coming near. He open up a sing hole as big as a Mountain, it took the messengers two days and a half to climb out of the hole. Down the road Hades had filled the tunnel leading to the third level with lava, but that didn’t deter them. They had found a cave that cracked from the original one that lead to level four. Where the Cerberus of Hades himself was waiting, but the messengers had slain his Cerberus. Enraged once more he himself rose from his throne and had buried them alive.

In Greek mythology, Hades the god of the underworld, was a son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He had three sisters, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, as well as two brothers, Zeus, the youngest of the three, and Poseidon. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release, the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad (xv.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, and Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with

Long ago, there was a girl named Athena, (meaning wisdom, and war), daughter of Zeus and niece to Hades. Zeus raised Athena, but Athena also spent a lot of time with Hades, her uncle. Unfortunately for Athena, Zeus and Hades hated each other because they both wanted world domination, power, and Athena’s love. Zeus and Hades fought and fought, this made Athena sad because she loved them both.

The Underworld was given to Hades when, him and his brothers were drawing sticks for the different area’s in the world. Such as the sky, underworld, and the ocean. When the Three Fates cut the yarn leading to a specific person that person dies. Then, when you enter there is a large cybrus, a three headed dog, guarding the entrance. Almost no man’s soul was ever allowed to leave. During the time of the underworld there was said to be a boatman who took the souls of the dead across the river.

The Odyssey emphasizes the barren and sad nature of the Underworld, showing that the Greeks believe that death is the end of life's happiness. Odysseus' mother explains to Odysseus why he cannot embrace her: “The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together;/ these perish in the fierceness of consuming fire as soon as life has/left the body, and the soul flits away as though it were a dream” (Homer 6). From this statement, it can be inferred that the Greeks think that death is a great equalizer. The bad have it worse in Hell but they die like the good, feeling rather sad in not being able to live again. Virgil, however, describes the Underworld in greater detail through its sequences and in much more glorified details (Leach 120). In The Aeneid, every seat in the Underworld is a product of judgment on people's lives (121). Virgil depicts Pluto's dome, which has the roman vestibulum where official and honorable guests congregate (121). Virgil also describes the differences between the people of honor and people of sin in the Underworld. Sinners suffer in the cliff guarded by Tisiphone, where vultures eat their livers and experience numerous other forms of suffering. The Underworld also holds heroes who continually fight their legendary battles: “Here found they Tsucer's old heroic race,/ Born better times and happier years to grace./ Assaracus and Ilus here enjoy/ Perpetual fame, with him who founded Troy” (Virgil 6). Virgil is saying that

My personal myth story begins on the day that I was born. October 17th, 1989. The day of the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake. I was born at 4:05, almost an hour exactly before the earthquake shook northern California. Since that day, my family has always referred to me as the earthquake baby. I immediately connected to the Poseidon archetype, as well as to the archetype of Hades, and see characteristics of these two gods play out in my personal life. In this paper, I would first like to discuss Poseidon, how I connected to him, how some of his qualities play out in my life, and what I learned from him. Then I would like to discuss Hades, why I connected to him, the underworld qualities that I see in my daily life, and what I learned

The underworld was viewed as the opposite of what we think of heavens. It is a dark and shadowy alternative reality of the life on earth. Ancient Mesopotamians believed that the universe is a sphere and that one-half of it was occupied by the living and the other half was occupied by the spirits of the dead. It was believed that this world resides far away from the realm of the living, but it was physically a short distance underground. It was called the "land of no return". However, the world is neither a place of pain and dread but it also is not a place of happiness and comfort, but in fact is a diminished and dim version of the world of the living; thus it was not "hell". It was merely a place for dead spirits whose bodies, graves, or

The Greek Underworld is a place where spirits go after a person dies. Some poets write that there are two divisions of the Underworld, Tartarus and Erebus. Hades or Pluto is the God of the Underworld. The gate to the Underworld is guarded by Cerberus which is a "three-headed, dragon tailed dog." It lets spirits go into the Underworld but doesn 't let them come back out. After that, there are three judges that decide if the spirit goes to "everlasting torment" or goes to a place of blessedness called the Elysian Fields. There are three rivers that separate the Underworld from the Earth above. There is Pluto 's palace but it seems to be a mystery.

The darkness fills a land where evil runs unopposed, illuminated by the five gushing rivers that characterize the land, each unique to their region of hell. At the center, the infamous river of Styx flows from Oceanus, creating a boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead. The Kokytos river branches southward off of Styx feeding into the marsh. On the other side of the marsh, the Acheron river ebbs and flows southeast. Northwest of Styx, towards the Gates of Ivory lays the waters of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Circling the Northern region of Tartarus flows Phlegethon, winding like a python ready to choke the life out of its prey. Close to Phelegethon, east of Tartus, is the plain of Judgments where cries of