He would take the souls across the river Acheron to the other bank, where stand the adamantine gates of Tartarus. In fact, only the souls whose bodies have received proper burial rituals and having a coin placed on either their eyes or lips were sure to reach the gates of Hades.Īfter the ritual was over, souls were brought to the underworld entrance by the god Hermes, where awaited Charon, the old ferryman of the underworld. The Rivers of the Underworld (Hades)įor the dead, going to the underworld was a privilege not given to everyone. It’s like a miserable dream, a realm invisible to the living and only made for the dead.įor some, the underworld is more clearly seen as where the wicked are punished, and the righteous rewarded, where there is a torment of one class and the others’ joy is described at length. The underworld is vague, a shadowy place inhabited by shadows, where nothing is real, or instead, its reality is beyond any mortals understanding.

In some accounts, it was said that various entrances were leading to it through caves and deep lakes. The way to it leads over the edge of the world across the ocean. This world is often called Hades-after its ruler-and lies beneath the earth’s secret places. The Greek underworld, the kingdom of the dead, was ruled by one of the twelve Olympians, Hades or Pluto, by the Romans and his queen Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. A place where dead people suffer for eternity based on their own beliefs. The hades, the underworld, the afterlife or even Hell were names assigned to the world of the dead. In the Christian Bible, Hades was referred to as the ‘common grave of mankind’. Hades or Gehenna is a domain imperceptible to the living, made exclusively for the dead. It is viewed as the dark counterpart to Mount Olympus‘s brightness, with the realm of the dead relating to the realm of the divine beings. The underworld is depicted as either at the sea’s outer limits or underneath the earth’s profundities or ends. The underworld is commonly referred to as ‘Hades’, a place of the dead, picking the name after the Greek god of the underworld and dead Hades, brother of the six original Olympians. In mythology, the underworld is a different world where the dead go after death and resides. The Dead Who were Given Permission to Leave the Underworld.When Living Souls Visited the Underworld.

Erebus hades