Hades

“ For if you have not, you shall come back from loathly Hades and live with me and your father, the dark-clouded Son of Cronos and be honoured by all the deathless gods; but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: yet for the two parts you shall be with me and the other deathless gods. But when the earth shall bloom with the fragrant flowers of spring in every kind, then from the realm of darkness and gloom thou shalt come up once more to be a wonder for gods and mortal men. ”

“ The scene of the descent into Hades is in very deed enacted day by day before our eyes, as it was before the eyes of the ancient myth-maker, who watched the sun descend to the dark under-world, and return at dawn to the land of living men. These heroic legends lie in close-knit connexion with episodes of solar myth. ”

“ Then the Lord went down into Hades, not in the flesh, but in the spirit; He despoiled Hades and made Himself its Master. His Blood shed on the earth protected all the earth, and all in it ; His Body raised the dead, and benefited the Elements; His Spirit saved the souls in Hades and set them free, and gave them to their bodies which He raised up out of the earth. He rose from the dead at dawn on the First Day of the Week ; had He not died man could not have been saved. Death fell down at Christ's feet, and was conquered ; the Devil, the tyrant and rebel, became a captive. ”

“ And Hades thrust Satan outside of his realms. And Hades said to his impious officers: Shut the cruel gates of brass, and put up the bars of iron, and resist bravely, that we, holding captivity, may not take Him captive. ”

“ There is no Hades, nor Acheron, nor Cocytus, nor Pyriphlegethon; but all is full of gods and divine beings. He who can think of the whole universe as his home, and can look upon the sun, moon and stars as his friends, and enjoy the companionship of the earth and sea, he is no more solitary nor helpless exile. Let death come to you when he will. Can death banish you from the universe? You know he cannot. Go where you may, there will be still a sun, moon, and stars, dreams and auguries and communications with the Gods. ”

“ At each of the seven gates of Hades the goddess left some portion of her apparel, until she at last reached the abode of the dead, dark and joyless, where dust alone is the food of the unhappy shades. ”

“ The sire of gods and men thundered from heaven above, while from beneath Neptune shook the vast earth, and bade the high hills tremble. The spurs and crests of many-fountained Ida quaked, as also the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans. Hades, king of the realms below, was struck with fear; he sprang panic-stricken from his throne and cried aloud in terror lest Neptune, lord of the earthquake, should crack the ground over his head, and lay bare his mouldy mansions to the sight of mortals and immortals—mansions so ghastly grim that even the gods shudder to think of them. ”

“ Hades is a place in the world not regularly finished; a subterraneous region, wherein the light of this world does not shine; from which circumstance, that in this region the light does not shine, it cannot be but there must be in it perpetual darkness. This region is allotted as a place of custody for souls, ill which angels are appointed as guardians to them, who distribute to them temporary punishments, agreeable to every one's behavior and manners. ”

“ The Greeks did not view the banishment of souls in Hades as a punishment for sin, or the result of any broken law in the plan of things. It was to them merely the fulfilment of the inevitable fate of creatures who must die, in the order of nature, like successive growths of flowers, and whose souls were too feeble to rank with gods and climb into Olympus. ”

“ Hades shall not have my child to live with him in his dreary kingdom." But Persephone said, "It may not be so, my mother; I cannot stay with you always; for before Hermes brought me away to see you, Hades gave me a pomegranate, and I have eaten some of the seeds; and after tasting the seed I must go back to him again when six months have passed by. And indeed, I am not afraid to go; for although Hades never smiles or laughs, and everything in his palace is dark and gloomy, still he is very kind to me: and I think that he feels almost happy since I have been his wife. ”

“ It is no wonder that the lively imagination of the Greek transferred the earthly Styx to Hades, and represented the most awful and binding oath of the gods, by which they pledged their immortality, as that one which they swore by this hated and deadly water. ”

“ Oh, thrice blessed the mortals, who, having contemplated these Mysteries, have descended to Hades; for those only will there be a future life of happiness—the others there will find nothing but suffering. ”

“ The “house of Hades” was a dreadful abode deep down in the earth, and the god was invoked by rapping on the ground. According to another view, the realm of Hades was beyond the ocean in the far west, which to the Greek was always the region of darkness and death, as the east of light and life. This is the view of Hades presented in the Odyssey. Besides this gloomy region, we find in another passage of the Odyssey (iv. 561 seq.) a picture of Elysium, a happy land at the ends of the earth, where rain and snow fall not, but the cool west wind blows and men live at ease. ”

“ The Greater Mysteries taught that he who, in the present life, is in subjection to his irrational part, is truly in Hades. If Hades, then, is the region of punishment and misery, the purified soul must reside in the region of bliss, theoretically, in the present life, and according to a deific energy in the next. They intimated by gorgeous mystic visions the felicity of the soul, both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a material nature and consequently elevated to the realities of intellectual vision. ”

“ HADES, n. The lower world; the residence of departed spirits; the place where the dead live.
Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word "Aides" as "Hell" ”

“ Legend told how at the command of the gods of light, Nergal had forced his way into the dark recesses of the underworld, and there compelled the goddess to become his bride. From henceforward Hades was a realm under the control of the gods of heaven, and part of that orderly universe which they governed and directed.
The conquest of Hades by the gods of light implied the conquest by them of death. The dead was no longer a mere ghost, beyond the reach of the lords of heaven, and able to play havoc in their own sphere when darkness had swallowed up the light. ”

“ Even the soul in Hades was conceived as having a body in every respect like that the soul possessed in the earthly life, only it was composed of a subtler substance. This conception of matter as being alive will help us to understand Greek mythology, which, it will be remembered, endowed trees, rivers, springs, clouds, the planets, all physical objects indeed, with intelligence and will. ”

“ Dark-haired Hades, ruler over the departed, father Zeus bids me bring noble Persephone forth from Erebus unto the gods, that her mother may see her with her eyes and cease from her dread anger with the immortals; for now she plans an awful deed, to destroy the weakly tribes of earth-born men by keeping seed hidden beneath the earth, and so she makes an end of the honours of the undying gods. For she keeps fearful anger and does not consort with the gods, but sits aloof in her fragrant temple, dwelling in the rocky hold of Eleusis. ”

“ These demons of Hades were imagined as blood-devouring, blood-sucking monsters, not sparing even the images of the gods. Like serpents they glided into houses. "They take away the wife from her husband, tear the child from his father's bosom, drive the master away from his household." "From land to land they go, driving the maidens from their chambers, the son they lead away from the house of his parents-in-law, they drive the child from his father's house, they snatch the doves from the dove-cot, the bird out of its nest, they drive the swallows from their nests. ”

“ Page 160 the divisible life of the soul, falling into generation, is rejuvenized in its subsequent career. But what emblem can more beautifully represent the evolutions and outgoings of an intellectual nature into the regions of sense than the wanderings of Ceres by the light of torches through the darkness of night, and continuing the pursuit until she proceeds into the depths of Hades itself? ”

“ How would it not grieve him could he hear of them as now quailing before Hector? Many a time would he lift his hands in prayer that his soul might leave his body and go down within the house of Hades. ”

“ They all reappear—those from the Empyrean—these from Hades—reminding us of the good or the evil borne in other days, within the spiritual regions of our boundless being. The world of [Pg 265] eye and ear is not in reality narrowed because it glimmers; ever and anon as years advance, a light direct from heaven dissipates the gloom, and bright and glorious as of yore the landscape laughs to the sea, the sea to heaven, and heaven back again to the gazing spirit that leaps forward to the hailing light with something of the same divine passion that gave wings to our youth. ”

“ But when man afterwards by his fall had inclined to death, it was necessary that that form should be recreated anew to salvation by the same Artificer. For the form indeed lay rotting in the ground; but that inspiration which had been as the breath of life, was detained separate from the body in a dark place, which is called Hades. ”

“ To sea-going folk like the Greeks, who for many generations had been sending off swarms of their kindred in search of fresh homes in distant lands, its recitation must have stirred the imagination and roused curiosity in a hundred ways; and the descent of the hero to Hades is the earliest view we have of the vague terror of the hereafter, which has inevitably been encountered sooner or later by all peoples whose minds have in any way been roused to speculate on the mystery of life and death. ”

“ Every place is filled with the dead, the sea and the rivers, the earth and the mountains, and the wild beasts and the birds of prey devour the dead, and are sated with their slaughtered bodies. And Hades is filled with the souls which are bound in fetters. ”

“ After death, according to their belief, the soul descended into a world below the surface of the earth. The Greeks called it the realm of Hades, from the name of its ruler, otherwise known as Pluto. The latter name signifies the wealthy, because sooner or later all the children of men and all their possessions come under his power. The meaning of Hades is unknown, as its derivation from æidos, unseen, is now generally doubted by the best Greek scholars. ”

“ It was the same goddess of the pine-tree, that appeared before him and said: "I have come to tell you that you cannot stay long in the world of men after once eating the grapes and mulberries of Hades. There is a goddess in Hades who wishes to marry you. She it was who, assuming the form of a bear, lured you into the cavern, and thence to the under-world. You must make up your mind to come away." ”

“ To be carried away to Hades while in sleep is like being betrayed into a surprise and having life taken before the mind is made up. If death it must be, the dying should be made to resign to [109] Fate, and one should like to say a prayer or two, yielding to the inevitable. ”

“ I have alluded, in an earlier part of this work, to the belief entertained by the ancients that the souls of men, on being disengaged from the bodies, passed into a middle state, called Hades, in which their portions seemed to be neither that of complete happiness nor of insupportable misery. ”

“ The first story is too familiar to need recounting; who has not heard of the gentle Persephone gathering flowers in the meadow and suddenly swallowed by the yawning earth and carried away to Hades, the god of the nether world, to share his sombre but sublime dominion over the shades?—a dignity of which she is not insensible, much as she grieves at the separation from her beloved mother ”

“ Here it refers to Hades—the region of the dead—the abode of wicked spirits—as a deep, dark place, whose bottom was unknown. Having the key to this, is to have the power to confine those who are there, or to permit them to go at large. The meaning here is, that this master-spirit would have power to evoke the dead from these dark regions; and it would be fulfilled if some mighty genius, that could be compared with a fallen star, or a lurid meteor, should summon forth followers which would appear like the dwellers in the nether world called forth to spread desolation over the earth. ”

“ Moreover, since Heracleitus [2] the physical philosopher says, “The same are Hades and Dionysus, to honour whom they rage and rave,” people are inclined to come to this opinion. In fact, those who insist that the body is called Hades, since the soul is, as it were, deranged and inebriate when it is in the body, are too frivolous in their use of allegory. ”