60 Fun Facts About Hades

In Greek mythology, Hades is the god of what?

His name became so synonymous with his realm that Greeks used 'Hades' for the place as much as the god.

Which two gods are Hades's brothers, with whom he divided the cosmos?

The three drew lots: sky, sea and underworld, with the earth shared among them.

Persephone was doing what when Hades carried her off to be his queen?

Her father Zeus had already promised her to Hades, which is why the abduction happened at his behest.

What is the name of the three-headed dog that guards the underworld?

Hesiod originally gave him fifty heads; later writers settled on three.

Under what Roman name was Hades widely known?

It comes from the Greek euphemism Plouton, 'the rich one', since crops and metals come from below.

Hades was the eldest son of which Titan couple?

Being the firstborn made him the first swallowed and the last spat back out.

What did Hades's father do to him and his siblings at birth?

Only the youngest, Zeus, escaped thanks to their mother's trick, and later forced the others' release.

Which magical item did the Cyclopes forge for Hades to use in the war against his father's generation?

Athena, Perseus and the messenger god all borrow the cap in later stories.

How did the three brothers decide who would rule sky, sea and underworld?

The story comes from a single famous passage in Book 15 of the Iliad.

What did Hades secretly give Persephone to eat, binding her to the underworld?

Because she had tasted the food of the dead she must spend a third of every year below.

What fraction of the year does Persephone spend in the underworld under Zeus's compromise?

Her absence is when winter falls upon the earth.

Persephone's mother, who cursed the land with famine after the abduction, is which goddess?

Mother and daughter were the central figures of the most famous Greek mystery cult.

Which god does Zeus send down to persuade Hades to release Persephone?

The messenger god finds Hades on a couch with Persephone beside him, and takes the reins for the ride back up.

Which musician charmed Hades into freeing Eurydice, on condition he did not look back?

Even Persephone was moved by the music; the condition, of course, was broken.

Which mortal king was punished by rolling a boulder uphill forever after twice cheating death?

He once chained Death himself, so that nobody on earth could die until Ares freed him.

Which friend of Theseus went to the underworld to steal Persephone and was trapped there?

Hades offered them a feast; snakes coiled round their feet the moment they sat down.

Who was the only living hero to wound Hades, shooting him with an arrow at Pylos?

The wounded god went up to Olympus to be healed by Paean, physician of the gods.

Before fetching the three-headed dog, the hero was initiated into the mystery cult of which town?

He wanted absolution for killing centaurs and instruction on how to get in and out of the underworld alive.

Which demigod physician was killed by Zeus, at Hades's urging, for raising the dead?

Hades felt cheated of his subjects; the healer was later made a god anyway.

Hades turned his nymph lover Minthe into which plant after a jealous Persephone trampled her?

In one version it is her mother, not Persephone, who does the trampling.

Hades created a white tree in Elysium as a memorial to which nymph, a daughter of Oceanus?

A visiting hero crowned himself with its leaves to celebrate coming back from the underworld alive.

Who ferries the dead across the river into Hades's realm in exchange for a coin?

The obol was placed in the mouth of the corpse; the unburied waited a hundred years on the near shore.

Which underworld river did even the gods swear their oaths upon?

It means 'hate', and it forms the boundary between the upper and lower worlds.

Which underworld river's name means 'oblivion', its waters erasing memory?

Initiates of the Mysteries drank instead from the pool of Mnemosyne, memory.

Which of the underworld's rivers is the river of fire?

The other four are sorrow, lamentation, oblivion and hate.

How many rivers run through the realm of Hades?

Each carries a symbolic meaning: sorrow, lamentation, fire, oblivion and hate.

In which region of the underworld do the shades of ordinary heroes wander, twittering like bats?

Only libations of blood briefly give them back human feeling, as Odysseus discovers.

Which part of the underworld is reserved for the punishment of the impious and evil?

Apollodorus says it is as far below Hades as the earth is below the sky.

Who are the three judges who sit in the forecourt of Hades's palace?

They sit where three roads meet, a crossroads sacred to Hecate.

What was Hades's name generally understood to mean since antiquity?

Around the 5th century BC the Greeks began using Plouton instead, apparently from fear of saying it.

The euphemism Plouton, which became the Roman Pluto, means what?

Sophocles explained it: 'the gloomy Hades enriches himself with our sighs and our tears'.

What colour of animal was sacrificed to Hades?

Worshippers banged on the ground to get his attention and averted their faces as the blood ran into a pit.

How many black horses drew Hades's chariot?

Claudian even names them: Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus and Alastor.

Which object, showing the underworld's gates stay locked, is one of Hades's attributes in art?

He also appears with sceptres, cornucopias and roosters, seated on an 'ebony throne'.

Who was the actual Greek personification of death, distinct from Hades?

Euripides's Alcestis nevertheless treats the two as one and the same, dark-cloaked and winged.

Which philosopher declared that Hades and Dionysus were the same god?

The two share epithets, and Persephone's mother refused to drink wine after the abduction, which Kerényi took as a hint.

Which Roman gods were merged with Hades to form Pluto?

The Etruscan Aita was folded in as well.

According to Hesiod, what did Hades do when the monster Typhon attacked the Olympians?

Zeus did the fighting above while his brother cowered in the underworld.

In Roman myth, the entrance to the underworld used by Aeneas was at Avernus, a crater near which city?

'Avernus' came to stand for the whole underworld by synecdoche.

Which two daughters of Orion sacrificed themselves to end a plague and became comets?

They killed themselves with the shuttles of their looms after invoking the underworld gods three times.

Persephone's Latin name, used by the Romans, is what?

The Romans also identified her with the Italic goddess Libera.

By what other name, meaning 'the maiden', is Persephone known as a vegetation goddess?

Some scholars treat Kore and Persephone as originally distinct deities.

In Hesiod's Theogony, the underworld's guard dog is described with how many heads?

Pindar gave him a hundred; almost everyone later settled on three.

Which studio developed the 2020 roguelike video game Hades?

It grew out of their earlier game Pyre and a wish to try procedural storytelling.

In the video game Hades, the player controls which son of Hades trying to escape the underworld?

His name comes from a fragment of Aeschylus that makes Zagreus a son of Hades.

The video game Hades was the first game to win which honour, in a special 2021 category?

The science-fiction award created a video-game category that year.

In the video game Hades, the hero has been raised to believe which goddess of night is his mother?

He eventually learns his real mother is Persephone, living in the mortal world.

Who voices the villainous Hades in Disney's Hercules (1997)?

His fast-talking, flame-haired performance was singled out for praise by critics.

In Disney's Hercules, what are the names of Hades's two bumbling minions?

They fail to kill baby Hercules and decide not to tell their boss.

In Disney's Hercules, Hades plans to free which beings to conquer Olympus during a planetary alignment?

The Fates tell him it will only work if Hercules does not interfere, hence the plot.

Which of Hades's epithets meant 'host of many'?

It was another euphemism for a name that was thought unsafe to pronounce.

Where was Persephone picking flowers when Hades abducted her, per the Homeric Hymn?

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the oldest telling, dates to about the start of the 6th century BC.

How does the Iliad say Hades, Poseidon and Zeus decided who would rule which realm?

The famous passage is in Iliad Book XV, lines 187-93.

Which two plants were among Hades's ordinary attributes in art?

He also carried the Key of Hades, along with scepters, cornucopias and roosters on pottery.

By what name was Hades known in Homeric and Ionic Greek?

Soranus was his name among the Sabines, worshipped in a temple on Mount Soracte.

Which epithet of Hades, avoiding his real name, likens him to his brother as king of the underworld?

Other epithets, Agesander and Agesilaos, describe him as the god who carries away all men.

In Aeneid Book VI, how long do paupers and the friendless wait on the river's near shore?

They lacked the coin to pay Charon; the far shore was guarded by Cerberus.

In the myth of Alcestis, whom did Heracles defeat to bring her back from the dead?

In Euripides's play Alcestis he wrestles Thanatos, the personification of death, instead.

In a lost play by Aeschylus, which figure is named as the son of Hades?

Later Orphic Hymns make Hades father of the Eumenides by Persephone, and the Suda names a daughter Macaria.

How does the Sibylline oracles' folk etymology explain the name Hades?

The oracles blend Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian elements; Hades also gained a distinct meaning through the New Testament.