Hades in Greek Mythology: King of the Underworld

Hades was the Greek king of the underworld and ruler of the dead, a son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea and a brother of Zeus and Poseidon. When the three brothers drew lots for the world, he received the realm beneath the earth, where he ruled beside his wife, Persephone. He was stern and unbending rather than evil, and he was not the god of death itself — that was Thanatos.

Hades quick facts

Is Hades the god of death?

No. Hades rules the dead, but he does not bring death. In Hesiod's Theogony, Death (Thanatos) and his brother Sleep (Hypnos) are children of Night, and Thanatos is the one with a heart of iron who seizes mortals. In Euripides' Alcestis, it is Thanatos — not Hades — who comes to take the queen, and Heracles wrestles him at her tomb to win her back.

The job split is clear: Thanatos takes the soul, the guide Hermes leads it down (as he leads the dead suitors in Odyssey Book 24), the ferryman Charon carries it over the river, and Hades keeps it there.

What are Hades' powers?

Hades' power is simple and absolute: whatever enters his kingdom stays there.

• Lord of the dead. He rules every soul below, with Persephone as queen. Homer even calls him "Zeus of the underworld" — the same authority as his brother, in a different realm.
• The helmet of invisibility. Apollodorus says the Cyclopes forged it for him during the war against the Titans, when they gave Zeus the thunderbolt and Poseidon the trident. In Iliad Book 5, Athena puts on "the cap of Hades" so that Ares cannot see her, and the nymphs lend it to Perseus for his attack on Medusa.
• Wealth below the earth. His title Plouton links him to ploutos, riches. In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates explains the name by the wealth that comes up from the ground.
• A realm that holds. Eating its food binds the living to it, which is why a single pomegranate seed decides Persephone's fate.

His realm also had a geography. In Odyssey Book 10, Circe tells Odysseus that the rivers Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the Styx, flow into Acheron at a great rock. Cerberus guards the gate: Hesiod gives him fifty heads and says he greets newcomers with a wagging tail but eats anyone who tries to leave.

See how this ranks against the gods of the sky and the sea in Greek gods and their powers.

Is Hades a god or a place?

Both, but the god came first. In Homer, "Hades" is almost always the god, and the dead go "to the house of Hades." Later Greek used the name for the place itself, and that is the sense that survives in English.

The Greeks were also wary of saying his name at all. In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates notes that people preferred to call him Plouton because they feared the name Hades. The popular explanation of Hades as "the unseen one" is ancient, but Plato's Socrates rejects it and connects the name with knowing instead.

Why did Hades kidnap Persephone?

Because he wanted a wife and Zeus agreed — without asking her mother. Hesiod states it in one line: Hades carried off Persephone, and Zeus gave her to him. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter tells the whole story. At Zeus's will, Gaia grows a wonderful narcissus to lure the girl; when she reaches for it, the earth opens, and Hades rides out in a golden chariot and seizes her.

When Demeter learns the truth and stops the crops from growing, Zeus sends Hermes to bring Persephone back. Hades agrees, but first gives her a pomegranate seed, which binds her to the underworld for part of every year. In the hymn, Hades argues that he is a worthy husband: Zeus's own brother, offering her rule over everything that lives.

Ovid's Metamorphoses changes the motive: Venus has Cupid shoot Dis (Hades) so that even the underworld will feel love's power.

Is Hades evil?

No — but the Greeks did not love him either. In Iliad Book 9, Agamemnon calls Hades relentless and unyielding, and says that is why mortals hate him most of all the gods.

Yet Hades does not tempt, corrupt or rebel, and he does not wage war on the gods or plot against Zeus. He is not a devil. Even punishment is mostly handled by others: in Odyssey Book 11, Minos passes judgments among the dead with a golden scepter, and Plato's Gorgias adds Rhadamanthus and Aeacus as judges. The great sinners Odysseus sees there — Tityos, Tantalus, Sisyphus — suffer endless punishments, but the poem never shows Hades devising them. The bleakness of his realm is the real horror. Achilles, in the same book, says he would rather be a hired labourer for a poor man on earth than king of all the dead.

Who escaped from the underworld of Hades?

Very few, and mostly with permission. The famous visitors:

The Orpheus story shows how much the sources diverge. In Virgil and Ovid, Orpheus nearly wins and loses Eurydice at the last moment. In Plato's Symposium, the gods only ever show him a phantom of her, because he lacked the courage to die for love.

Why was Hades not one of the Olympians?

Because he did not live on Olympus. The twelve Olympians were the gods of Olympus, and Hades kept to his own realm, which the Iliad describes as a place even the gods find hateful. In Iliad Book 20, when Poseidon makes the earth shake, Hades leaps from his throne and cries out in fear that his brother will split the ground open and show his realm to gods and mortals. He is equal in rank to his brothers, but he is no part of their daily company.

In the sources

Hades appears in Hesiod's Theogony (his birth and Persephone); Homer's Iliad (the lots, the helmet, his terror at Poseidon's earthquake) and Odyssey (the voyage to the dead in Book 11, the rivers in Book 10); the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (the abduction); Euripides' Alcestis; Aristophanes' Frogs, where Dionysus pays Charon two obols to cross; Plato's Cratylus, Gorgias and Symposium; the Library of Apollodorus; Pausanias; and, as Dis or Pluto, in Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The sources disagree, or fill each other's gaps, on these points:

• How many heads does Cerberus have? Fifty in Hesiod's Theogony. In Apollodorus he has three dog heads, a serpent for a tail and snakes along his back.
• Who caused the abduction? Zeus in the Homeric Hymn; Venus and Cupid in Ovid.
• Did Orpheus have a real chance? Yes in Virgil and Ovid; no in Plato.
• Who was the mint nymph? Ovid's Metamorphoses only mentions that Persephone once changed a woman into mint. The geographer Strabo supplies the name Minthe, makes her Hades' mistress and says Persephone trampled her underfoot.

In popular culture

• Disney's Hercules (1997). Hades, voiced by James Woods, is a fast-talking villain who schemes to overthrow Zeus with the Titans. No ancient source has Hades plotting against his brother; his villainy is Disney's invention.
• Hades (2020) and Hades II. Supergiant's Hades is a gruff, overworked king and the father of the hero Zagreus. Hades II stars Melinoë, his daughter with Persephone. Both children come from scattered Orphic and fragmentary traditions, which more often make them Persephone's children by Zeus; the main myths give Hades no children at all.
• Lore Olympus. Rachel Smythe's webcomic recasts Hades and Persephone as a modern love story. The Homeric Hymn tells an abduction, not a romance.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Steve Coogan played Hades in the 2010 film. In Riordan's books, Hades is the father of the demigods Nico and Bianca di Angelo, an invention with no ancient basis.
• God of War III (2010). Kratos fights and kills Hades. In the myths, no one kills the lord of the dead.

Keep exploring

Hades shares the world with his brothers: read about the sea god who shakes his realm in Poseidon in Greek mythology and the king of the sky in Who Was Zeus?. His sister-in-law and rival for Persephone is in Demeter in Greek mythology, and his sister-queen of Olympus in Hera in Greek mythology. Compare all the major gods in Greek gods and their powers, or set him against Egypt's ruler of the dead in Hades vs Osiris.