Source Verification: Hades
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
How did Hades become ruler of the underworld?
After Zeus and his siblings defeated the Titans, Poseidon explains in the Iliad, the three brothers divided the world by drawing lots: Zeus won the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, while the earth and Olympos stayed common ground to all three. Hades did not choose the underworld out of any particular wish for it; it was simply what the lot gave him.
Source: Homer, Iliad 15.187-193
Is Hades an evil god in Greek mythology?
No, not in the way the name later came to suggest in other traditions. Greek sources present him as stern and largely unmoved by pleading, but fundamentally fair: he enforces the rule that the dead stay dead and does not single anyone out for extra punishment, which is instead handled by underworld judges like Minos. His grimness is a function of his office, not a moral flaw.
Source: Homer, Iliad 9.158-159
Why did Hades abduct Persephone?
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the story from her mother's side: Hades desired Persephone and asked Zeus for her, and Zeus agreed without telling Demeter, letting Hades seize the girl while she gathered flowers in a meadow. Demeter's grief and search, not Hades's reasoning, is the center of the hymn's own account.
Source: Homeric Hymn to Demeter 1-20
Did anyone ever escape from the underworld once Hades held them?
A small number of mortals entered and returned, though almost never with what they came for. Orpheus persuaded Hades and Persephone to release his wife Eurydice on condition he not look back at her before reaching the surface, and lost her when he broke the condition. Heracles retrieved Cerberus and Odysseus consulted the dead and left again, but neither took anyone back from the realm of the dead itself.
Source: Virgil, Georgics 4.453-527
Why is Hades sometimes called Plouton or Pluto instead?
Plouton, "the wealthy one," was a common euphemism avoiding the god's own grimmer name, tying him to the material riches - precious metals and buried seed-grain alike - that come from beneath the earth rather than to death directly. This is the form of the name that passed into Roman religion and then into English as Pluto, and it eventually influenced a further blurring with Plutus, a separate and minor god of wealth.
Source: Homer, Iliad 9.569
Where Accounts Differ
- whether Hades counts as one of the twelve Olympians
- Hades is sometimes excluded from the twelve Olympians since he resides in the underworld rather than on Mount Olympus, an exclusion the ancient sources themselves do not treat as settled - some lists include him, some substitute Hestia or Dionysus for the twelfth seat instead.
Sources
- Homeric Hymn to Demeter 1-20
- Homer, Iliad 15.187-193
- Homer, Odyssey 11.20-50
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)