Editing Hades (section)

==Realm of Hades==
[[Image:Cumae.gif|thumb|Aeneas's journey to Hades through the entrance at Cumae mapped by [[Andrea de Jorio]], 1825]]
{{Main|Greek underworld|Hades in Christianity}}
In older Greek myths, the realm of Hades is the misty and gloomy<ref name="ReferenceA">[[Homeric Hymns|Homeric Hymn to Demeter]]</ref> abode of the dead (also called [[Erebus]]<ref name="ReferenceA"/>) where all mortals go when they die. Very few mortals could leave Hades once they entered. The exceptions, [[Heracles]] and [[Theseus]], are heroic.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ddESCOm09QEC&q=Very+few+mortals+could+leave+Hades+once+they+entered.Heracles+and+Theseus+did&pg=PA131|title=Gleanings: Essays 1982-2006|last=Downing|first=Christine|date=June 2006|publisher=iUniverse|isbn=978-0-595-40036-2|language=en}}</ref> Even Odysseus in his ''[[Nekyia]]'' (''Odyssey'', xi) calls up the spirits of the departed, rather than descend to them. Later [[Greek philosophy]] introduced the idea that all mortals are judged after death and are either rewarded or cursed.{{Citation needed|date=January 2015}}

There were several sections of the realm of Hades, including [[Elysium]], the [[Asphodel Meadows]], and [[Tartarus]]. The mythographer [[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], describes Tartarus as "a gloomy place in Hades as far distant from Earth, as Earth is distant from the sky."<ref>[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], [http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.1.2 1.1.2].</ref> Greek [[mythography|mythographer]]s were not perfectly consistent about the geography of the [[afterlife]]. A contrasting myth of the afterlife concerns the [[Hesperides|Garden of the Hesperides]], often identified with the [[Fortunate Isles|Isles of the Blessed]], where the blessed heroes may dwell.

In [[Roman mythology]], the entrance to the underworld located at [[Avernus]], a crater near [[Cumae]], was the route [[Aeneas]] used to descend to the realm of the dead.<ref>''[[Aeneid]]'', book 6.</ref> By [[synecdoche]], "Avernus" could be substituted for the underworld as a whole. The ''[[di inferi]]'' were a collective of underworld divinities.

For Hellenes, the deceased entered the underworld by crossing the [[Styx]], ferried across by [[Charon (mythology)|Charon]] (kair'-on), who charged an ''[[obolus]],'' a [[Charon's obol|small coin for passage placed in the mouth]] of the deceased by pious relatives. [[poverty|Paupers]] and the friendless gathered for a hundred years on the near shore according to Book VI of Vergil's [[Aeneid]]. Greeks offered propitiatory [[libation]]s to prevent the deceased from returning to the [[Upper World (Greek)|upper world]] to "haunt" those who had not given them a proper burial. The far side of the river was guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog defeated by [[Heracles]] (Roman [[Hercules]]). Passing beyond Cerberus, the shades of the departed entered the land of the dead to be judged.

The five rivers of the realm of Hades, and their symbolic meanings, are [[Acheron]] (the river of sorrow, or woe), [[Cocytus]] (lamentation), [[Phlegethon]] (fire), [[Lethe]] (oblivion), and [[Styx]] (hate), the river upon which even the gods swore and in which Achilles was dipped to render him invincible. The Styx forms the boundary between the upper and lower worlds. See also [[Eridanos (mythology)|Eridanos]].

The first region of Hades comprises the [[Asphodel Meadows|Fields of Asphodel]], described in ''[[Odyssey]]'' xi, where the shades of heroes wander despondently among lesser spirits, who twitter around them like bats. Only [[libation]]s of blood offered to them in the world of the living can reawaken in them for a time the sensations of humanity.

Beyond lay [[Erebus]], which could be taken for a euphonym of Hades, whose own name was dread. There were two pools, that of [[Lethe]], where the common souls flocked to erase all memory, and the pool of [[Mnemosyne]] ("memory"), where the initiates of the Mysteries drank instead. In the forecourt of the palace of Hades and Persephone sit the three judges of the underworld: [[Minos]], [[Rhadamanthus]], and [[Aeacus]]. There at the [[wikt:trivium#Latin|trivium]] sacred to [[Hecate]], where three roads meet, souls are judged, returned to the [[Fields of Asphodel]] if they are neither virtuous nor evil, sent by the road to Tartarus if they are impious or evil, or sent to [[Elysium]] (Islands of the Blessed) with the "blameless" heroes.

In the [[Sibylline oracles]], a curious hodgepodge of Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian elements, Hades again appears as the abode of the dead, and by way of [[folk etymology]], it even derives ''Hades'' from the name [[Adam and Eve|Adam]] (the first man), saying it is because he was the first to enter there.<ref>''Sibylline Oracles'' I, 101–3</ref> Owing to its appearance in the [[New Testament]] of the [[Bible]], Hades also has a distinct meaning in [[Christianity]].