Hades
Hades names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Hades in Greek mythology
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in Greek mythology, the lower world in which the spirits of the dead dwelt. It received its name, Hades, from the god who ruled these regions. According to the most ancient writers, there was no separation of the just from the unjust in Hades. All spirits appeared to retain the outer form and to pursue instinctively the favorite occupation of their earthly life, but without interest. They had neither animation nor emotion, but were indeed only shades of their former selves. Later writers describe the souls as separated according to merits. The righteous dwell in Elysium and lead a painless, if not a positively happy existence, wandering in meadows where grow the pale flowers of the asphodel. The wicked endure various torments in Tartarus. In the Odyssey, the entrance to Hades is west of the river Oceanus; that is, at the end of the world where the sun drops into darkness. As western regions became better known, the entrance to Hades was located in various places, a writer selecting usually some gloomy cavern, perhaps in a volcanic region, as an appropriate place for shades to leave the light of day. The god Hades was represented as conducting them thither, although later writers assigned this task to Hermes. Perhaps the most interesting feature in the ancient account of Hades is the description of the five rivers, Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe. The first three of these names are ancient geographical appellations for real streams, each of which possessed some peculiarity of a nature to foster superstition or inspire awe. The waters of the Styx, in Arcadia, were bitter and fell from a lofty precipice amid wild and desolate scenery. The waterfall is still regarded with superstition. The people of the region believe the water to be noxious and call it the Black Water or the Terrible Water. Some critics claim that the Arcadian waterfall was not called Styx in prehistoric times, but received its name from the infernal river, which, in turn, was named for an Egyptian river Styx. Cocytus was the ancient name of a small stream in Epirus, now called the Vuvos, the waters of which are ungrateful to the taste. It flows for some distance underground and joins the Gurla, which is the modern name of a river formerly called the Acheron. This river flows, for a part of its course, between mountains whose precipitous sides rise for 3,000 feet above the bed of the stream. Thesprotia, the ancient name of that part of Epirus through which the Acheron flows, was believed to be the end of the world to the west. It is probable that some ancient writer, possibly Homer, boldly gave these names, already full of meaning to the weird fancy of a superstitious people, to the rivers by which he imagined Hades to be encircled. According to these accounts, the Styx flows seven times around the infernal regions. The Cocytus unites with it, and their waters then flow into the Acheron, which is represented as forming a lake. The Phlegethon or Pyriphlegethon is a river of flame. It flows in a direction opposite to that of the Cocytus, but like it, joins the Acheron. Charon, the ferryman, in his crazy boat carries the shades across the Acheron, the Cocytus, and the Styx. The fifth river of Hades is the Lethe. It is the river of forgetfulness. Other names given to Hades by the Greeks and Romans are Tartarus, Dis, Orcus, and Erebus. The rivers of Hades are thus described by Milton in Paradise Lost : Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge Into the burning lake their baleful streams-- Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate; Sad Acheron, of sorrow black and deep; Cocytus, named of lamentation loud, Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage. See Cerberus ; Styx ; Cocytus ; Acheron ; Phlegethon ; Charon ; Lethe
Hades ha'dez, in Greek mythology
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ha'dez, in Greek mythology, the god of the lower world. He ruled over all the other powers of the infernal regions and over the shades of the departed. Since the ancients located the dwelling of the dead in the bowels of the earth they came to assign to Hades the control of all the wealth of earth, including the products of mines as well as corn and other fruits of the soil. Then, because they dreaded to utter the name which called up the fearful images of death and darkness, they called Hades, Pluto, "giver of riches." Hades was the son of Cronos and Rhea, brother of Zeus and Poseidon. His wife was Persephone, and the two reigned in a splendid palace. Hades was supposed to bear a staff with which he drove souls to the lower world. He possessed a helmet which had the power of rendering its wearer invisible, and which both gods and men found occasion to borrow. In works of art, Hades resembles Zeus and Poseidon, but his face is dark and gloomy, with the hair falling over the forehead. He holds the key of the infernal regions, and the dog Cerberus is by his side. Sometimes he is crowned with maiden-hair fern, which plant was sacred to him, as were the cypress and narcissus. Ordinarily prayers to him were considered of no avail. In rare circumstances mortals invoked him, when black sheep were sacrificed and the attention of the god was called by striking upon the earth with the hand. The Romans identified Hades or Pluto with their Dis and Orcus. See Persephone ; Zeus ; Poseidon ; Mythology
Hades in Homer the Greek a god word Ades figures as the name of
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Homer the Greek a god word Ades figures as the name of , in large measure corresponding to the Roman Pluto. After Homer it becomes a place to which the dead go. Both Greeks and Romans supposed the infernal regions to be in the center of the earth. To enter these, in the Roman opinion, the river Styx had to be crossed by the spirits of the dead, Charon, the ferryman, for a small sum, rowing the boat. If, by any misfortune the body had been unburied, the soul had to wander 100 years on the banks of the Styx before it was taken across. Pluto was the king of the spirit world. Rhadamanthus its most noted judge. In the Jewish belief, the place of the dead; the Hebrew sheol, which occurs 65 times in the Hebrew Bible, and in 61 of them is rendered in the Septuagint Hades. In the Authorized Version of the English Bible it is translated in the Old Testament 31 times by "grave," 31 times by "hell," and 3 times by "pit." "The ancient Hebrews conceived of Sheol as situated below, so that souls had to "go down" or descend before entering it. In Christian doctrine, one of the two words rendered in the Authorized Version by the ambiguous term HELL (q. v.).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The mythology set out by Aiton's in 1910 and Collier's in 1921 is still the mythology taught today: Hades as both the shadowy god, son of Cronos and Rhea, and the realm of the dead with its Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon and Lethe. Two things have moved. Aiton's guess that the Arcadian Styx took its name from "an Egyptian river Styx" has found no support and is not repeated by modern scholars, who read the mythic rivers as drawn from the real Epirote Acheron and Cocytus, much as the entry itself suspected; and the discovery of the Derveni papyrus in northern Greece in 1962 — a fourth-century BC Orphic commentary, the oldest surviving book from Europe — gave scholars direct evidence of the mystery-cult speculation that turned Homer's undifferentiated shades into a sorted afterlife of Elysium and Tartarus. The other shift is in Bible reading: where the King James Version flattened the Greek "Hades" into "hell," twentieth-century translations such as the Revised Standard Version keep the word distinct, so English readers now meet Hades as a place of the dead rather than of punishment.
Written for this edition, 2026.