PLUTO, the god of the dead in Greek mythology. His oldest name was Hades (‘Atifys, Άιδτ/ς, ’Αδτ/ç), “the Unseen”; the name Pluto (∏λoυτωv) was given him as the bestower of the riches (τrλovτoς) of the mine, and in ordinary language it ousted the dread name of Hades, which was, however, retained in poetry. He was the son of Cronus and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Poseidon. Having deposed Cronus, the brothers cast lots for the kingdoms of the heaven, the sea, and the infernal regions, and Pluto obtained the infernal regions, which from their ruler were afterwards known as Hades. The “house of Hades” was a dark and dreadful abode deep down in the earth. How literally the god was supposed to dwell underground is shown by the method of invoking him, which was by rapping on the ground to attract his attention. According to another view the realm of Hades was in a land 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. Ulysses sails all day with a north wind, and at sunset reaches a land at the limits of ocean. Here, wrapped in mist and cloud, dwell the Cimmerians, who never see the sun. He lands, and moving along the shore he calls the ghosts of the departed to meet him. In the description of the Cimmerians we have perhaps a traveller’s tale of the long dark winters of the north. Besides this gloomy region, we find in another passage of the Odyssey (iv. 561 sq.) 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. After Homer this happy land, the abode of the good after death, was known as the Islands of the Blest, and these in ...later times were identified with Madeira and the Canary Islands. But in the oldest Greek mythology the “house of Hades” was a place neither of reward nor punishment; it was simply the home of the dead, good and bad alike, who led a dim and shadowy reflexion of life on earth. The differentiation of this “home of Hades” into a heaven and a hell was the result of progressive thought and morality. Pluto was himself simply the ruler of the dead; in no sense was he a tempter and seducer of mankind like the devil of Christian theology. Indeed the very conception of a devil, as a principle of evil in continual conflict with God or the principle of good, is totally foreign to Greek mythology, as it was also to Indian and Teutonic mythology. Pluto was certainly depicted as stem and pitiless, but he was so only in discharge of his duty as custodian of the dead. But even Pluto once melted at the music of Orpheus when he came to fetch from the dead his wife Eurydice. The cap of Hades, like the Nebelkappe of German mythology, rendered its wearer invisible; as a sort of thick cloud it was the reverse of the nimbus or halo of the heavenly gods. While the victims sacrificed to the latter were white, those offered to Pluto were black. His wife was Proserpine (Persephone), daughter of Demeter (Ceres), whom he carried off as she was gathering flowers at Enna in Sicily. Like the Greeks, the ancient Italians believed that the souls of the dead dwelt underground; in Latin the names for the god of the dead are Orcus and Father Dis, but the Greek name Pluto also frequently occurs. But, while Orcus was rather the actual slayer, the angel of death, Father Dis was the ruler of the dead, and thus corresponded to Pluto. Their names also correspond, Dis being a contraction for Dives, “wealthy.” The Etruscan god of death was represented as a savage old man with wings and a hammer; at the gladiatorial games of Rome a man masked after this fashion used to remove the corpses from the arena. In Romanesque folklore Orcus has passed into a forest-elf, a black, hairy, man-eating monster, upon whose house children lost in the woods are apt to stumble, and who sometimes shows himself kindly and helpful. He is the Italian or co, the Spanish ogro, the English ogre.
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