[Music] foreign is mythology's Warden of death He commands the vast and frightening realm that all Mortals good and bad must enter when they die it is his job to make sure they never Escape he is the god of the dead and none of us want to die he is to be feared his power is awesome the Greeks wanted nothing to do with Hades because to know him is to be dead the Greeks tended not to depict or represent Hades they are not temples built to him he's someone that has kept at arm's length like a
kind of Uncle whose business you're not sure about and don't want to talk about too much the main idea is that for the ancient Greeks to be dead is not a very good thing [Applause] happens after we die Hades is the ancient Greek god of the underworld a dark lord who controls all dead Souls [Music] but he wasn't always so menacing in the Palace of the Gods a baby's cries Pierce The Silence a newborn son his name is Hades [Music] his father is Cronus the king of Greece's ruling gods the Titans Cronus was told in
a prophecy that one of his children would murder him and he is determined to make sure that doesn't happen the father fears being replaced by the sun that's human psychology pronounce a solution to the problem was eat your kids [Music] in one swift motion Cronus consumes his newborn son infanticide wasn't really common in ancient Greece so the idea of a father actually deliberately trying to kill his children would have been very shocking to them now of course since they're Immortal the children that Chrono swallows are not dead they are just locked away inside of his
belly Hades and most of his siblings grow up inside their father's stomach but one child was able to escape cronus's Wrath his name is Zeus he returns as a grown God and frees his trapped brothers and sisters the siblings now unite to form the Olympians control of the Universe from their parents in a final Clash with the Titans after the overthrow of the titans the Olympians have the job of trying to figure out now who does what in this new order Hades Poseidon and Zeus the three male Olympians agree to divide The Spoils of Conquest
Hades is the oldest child and according to the real Greek law of the time that gives him an advantage throughout most of the Greek world the law of primagenitor was the practice which means the oldest born who should be Hades should have by right inherited the largest chair but Zeus the youngest brother has his own Ambitions to rule the world it is a clash between Zeus's ambition and Haiti's Birthright the brothers decide to draw Lots whoever wins the heavens will become the king of the Gods in ancient Greek custom the drawing of lots was a
typical procedure used to divide things up that were otherwise very difficult to discern and everybody would have recognized that the drawing of lots was a legitimate way to make a tough call like this the gods draw [Music] Poseidon claims the Seas Zeus claims the heavens thus becoming mythology's Supreme Commander and Hades draws the Short Straw he is left with the Land of the Dead [Music] it's not something he chose for himself it was faded him he did it but it bent him in some ways made him not a happy God it is a tragic turning
point for Hades he could have ruled the universe instead he is condemned to the realm of the Dead in ancient Greece the attitude towards death was not so different to our feelings today towards death so people would not worship Hades as much as they did Poseidon and Jews Hades new home is dark Bleak and filled with the sadness of dead soldiers thank you ancient texts describe it as a dank expanse of caves and rivers it is a place that is a dark and gloomy its rivers are full of mist it has it's the stench of
Decay it's a very forbidding place it place where if you go you do not come back from According to the myth dead Souls enter a vast and gloomy underworld a realm named after its Master Hades it is the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven hell and limbo all Under One Roof we in a Christian context think that what happens to you after death has to do with what you've done here on Earth if you've been a good person then you go to heaven if you've been a bad person you go to hell for the Greeks actually
those places were all located in one place they were all the underworld it's the one place we can't ever see we can make up stories about what might be going on there the great punishments that are occurring or the Terrible Things That might be happening but we never know and so we continue to wonder in the myth there are three levels of Hades most of the Dead descend to the fields of Asphodel the dreary resting place of the nameless masses the fate of the average person in the Underworld is just to have to wander around
a gray shade and live a not very exciting or interesting life it's a kind of sad place to be it was sort of like the the Catholic conception of limbo a sort of Twilight Place uh quiet and peaceful but full of morning trees where the soul would simply wander aimlessly and then there is the place reserved for those who've most offended the Gods Avast Abyss forty thousand miles deep a dungeon of suffering and eternal torment surrounded by a Flaming River very bad people would be sent to Tartarus which is quite like our the Christian conception
of hell in fact Tartarus was so closely linked with Hell by the early Christians that it was even mentioned in the New Testament and it appears in a verbal form in second Peter having to do with people being thrown into Tartarus then there were a few who were terribly Wicked who were punished in Tartarus and that I think is the origin of what Christians know as hell for the fortunate few Paradise awaits in the Third Realm of Hades the islands of the Blessed the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven Everything grows by itself and you can
eat your fill with no work there is absolutely no work there is constant rejoicing there are round dances there are streams and there is pure friendship s and glorious people would spend the rest of their lives
