The Queen and King of the Greek Underworld

The Greek Underworld
Photo Credit: nick-farrell.blogspot.com

The Greek underworld, a land tucked inside the earth, is a kingdom reserved strictly for the dead. It is a place painted vividly in mythology, furnished with complex geography (namely its surrounding rivers) and presided over by Hades. Hades’ reputation in the Greek underworld varies from story to story, but he is at times considered to be the most hated of all the gods.

Hades jealously guards the souls in his kingdom of the dead, working tirelessly to increase the number of his subjects and rarely allowing any to exit once they’ve entered. He came to rule the underworld as a matter of chance; it was simply the lot he received when splitting up the domains of the universe with his two brothers. Upon receiving this fate, Hades chose to spend most of his time in the kingdom of the dead, largely unaware of the happenings in the world of the living.

However, he did venture to the above world occasionally; Persephone‘s role in the Greek underworld was a product of one of those trips. Hades decided he craved a wife, so he traveled to earth and forcefully stole the young maiden Persephone as she played outside with her companions.

Photo Credit: http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/

Few were aware of her abduction as it happened, but Demeter, Persephone’s mother, soon discovered her absence and retreated into mourning. Consequently, the earth stopped producing its bounty (Demeter was the goddess of the harvest) and Zeus was forced to allow Persephone to return to earth so that Demeter would return to her job. However, Hades had no intentions of letting her go, so he fed Persephone pomegranate seeds before she escaped, thereby binding her to the underworld forever. Persephone was then obligated to spend part of each year in the underworld. Her time there was marked on earth by the change of the seasons — when Persephone was on earth with her mother, Earth saw spring and summer; as she descended into the underworld, the weather transitioned into autumn and winter.

The perspective of existence in the kingdom of the dead is an interesting one. Souls in the Greek underworld exist as rather ineffectual beings, leading a “life” not dissimilar from the one they led on earth, but devoid of any measure of strength or influence. As is true of much Greek mythology, exact accounts of the underworld experience vary; some but not all report that the beings are still able to drink, eat, experience emotion and more. Some accounts describe the beings in the underworld as indistinct skeletons while in others, they are portrayed as shadows. It takes a certain amount of bravery to characterize the afterlife in these rather stark terms. Afterall, there are few comforts and flourishes to ease the mind. Perhaps this perspective, then, shifts the focus from lifelong fear of death to lifelong presence of mind while living.

Related Links:

• Death Metaphors
• The Library of Greek Mythology
• Exploring the Traditions of Greece