Pluto ( Mythology ) - wikipedia Pluto ( Mythology ) Jump to : navigation , search For the dwarf planet , see Pluto . For other uses , see Pluto ( disambiguation ) . Pluto velificans , with a Cupid attending his abduction of Proserpina in a four - horse chariot ( Roman cinerary altar , Antonine Era , 2nd century ) Pluto ( Greek : Πλούτων , Ploutōn ) was the ruler of the underworld in classical mythology . The earlier name for the god was Hades , which became more common as the name of the underworld itself . In ancient Greek religion and mythology , Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife . Ploutōn was frequently conflated with Ploutos ( Πλοῦτος , Plutus ) , a god of wealth , because mineral wealth was found underground , and because as a chthonic god Pluto ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest . The name Ploutōn came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries , in which Pluto was venerated as a stern ruler but the loving husband of Persephone . The couple received souls in the afterlife , and are invoked together in religious inscriptions . Hades , by contrast , had few temples and religious practices associated with him , and he is portrayed as the dark and violent abductor of Persephone . Pluto and Hades differ in character , but they are not distinct figures and share two dominant myths . In Greek cosmogony , the god received the rule of the underworld in a three - way division of sovereignty over the world , with his brother Zeus ruling the Sky and his other brother Poseidon sovereign over the Sea . His central narrative is the abduction of Persephone to be his wife and the queen of his realm . Plouton as the name of the ruler of the underworld first appears in Greek literature of the Classical period , in the works of the Athenian playwrights and of the philosopher Plato , who is the major Greek source on its significance . Under the name Pluto , the god appears in other myths in a secondary role , mostly as the possessor of a quest - object , and especially in the descent of Orpheus or other heroes to the underworld . Plūtō ( ( ˈpluːtoː ) ; genitive Plūtōnis ) is the Latinized form of the Greek Plouton . Pluto 's Roman equivalent is Dis Pater , whose name is most often taken to mean `` Rich Father '' and is perhaps a direct translation of Plouton . Pluto was also identified with the obscure Roman Orcus , like Hades the name of both a god of the underworld and the underworld as a place . The borrowed Greek name Pluto is sometimes used for the ruler of the dead in Latin literature , leading some mythology handbooks to assert misleadingly that Pluto was the Roman counterpart of Hades . Pluto ( Pluton in French and German , Plutone in Italian ) becomes the most common name for the classical ruler of the underworld in subsequent Western literature and other art forms . Contents ( hide ) 1 Hesiod 2 Plouton and Ploutos 2.1 Other identifications 3 Mythology 3.1 Offspring 3.2 Pluto and Orpheus 4 Mysteries and cult 4.1 Orphic Hymn to Pluto 4.2 Magic invocations 4.3 Sanctuaries of Pluto 5 Iconography and attributes 5.1 In Eleusinian scenes 5.2 The keys of Pluto 5.3 Vegetation and color 5.4 The helmet of invisibility 5.5 Bident 6 In Greek literature and philosophy 7 Theogonies and cosmology 7.1 Euhemerism and Latinization 7.2 Orphic and philosophical systems 7.2. 1 Plouton Helios 7.2. 2 Plutonius 7.2. 3 Neoplatonic demiurge 8 In Western art and literature 8.1 Christianization 8.2 Medieval mythography 8.3 Medieval and Renaissance literature 8.4 Opera and ballet 8.5 Fine art 8.6 Modern literature 8.6. 1 Percy Jackson series 9 Scientific terms 10 Notes 11 External links Hesiod ( edit ) A mosaic of the Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis depicting the abduction of Persephone by Pluto , 4th century BC The name Plouton does not appear in Greek literature of the Archaic period . In Hesiod 's Theogony , the six children of Cronus and Rhea are Zeus , Hera , Poseidon , Hades , Demeter , and Hestia . The male children divide the world into three realms . Hades takes Persephone by force from her mother Demeter , with the consent of Zeus . Ploutos , `` Wealth , '' appears in the Theogony as the child of Demeter and Iasion : `` fine Plutus , who goes upon the whole earth and the broad back of the sea , and whoever meets him and comes into his hands , that man he makes rich , and he bestows much wealth upon him . '' The union of Demeter and Iasion , described also in the Odyssey , took place in a fallow field that had been ploughed three times , in what seems to be a reference to a ritual copulation or sympathetic magic to ensure the earth 's fertility . `` The resemblance of the name Ploutos to Plouton ... , '' it has been noted , `` can not be accidental . Plouton is lord of the dead , but as Persephone 's husband he has serious claims to the powers of fertility . '' Demeter 's son Plutus merges in the narrative tradition with her son - in - law Pluto , redefining the implacable chariot - driver Hades whose horses trample the flowering earth . That the underworld god was associated early on with success in agricultural activity is already evident in Hesiod 's Works and Days , line 465 - 469 : `` Pray to Zeus of the Earth and to pure Demeter to make Demeter 's holy grain sound and heavy , when first you begin ploughing , when you hold in your hand the end of the plough - tail and bring down your stick on the backs of the oxen as they draw on the pole - bar by the yoke - straps . '' Plouton and Ploutos ( edit ) Ploutos with the horn of abundance , in the company of Dionysos ( 4th century BC ) Plouton was one of several euphemistic names for Hades , described in the Iliad as the god most hateful to mortals . Plato says that people prefer the name Plouton , `` giver of wealth , '' because the name of Hades is fear - provoking . The name was understood as referring to `` the boundless riches of the earth , both the crops on its surface -- he was originally a god of the land -- and the mines hidden within it . '' What is sometimes taken as `` confusion '' of the two gods Plouton and Ploutos ( `` Wealth '' ) held or acquired a theological significance in antiquity . As a lord of abundance or riches , Pluto expresses the aspect of the underworld god that was positive , symbolized in art by the `` horn of plenty '' ( cornucopia ) , by means of which Plouton is distinguished from the gloomier Hades . The Roman poet Ennius ( ca . 239 -- 169 BC ) , the leading figure in the Hellenization of Latin literature , considered Pluto a Greek god to be explained in terms of the Roman equivalents Dis Pater and Orcus . It is unclear whether Pluto had a literary presence in Rome before Ennius . Some scholars think that rituals and beliefs pertaining to Pluto entered Roman culture with the establishment of the Saecular Games in 249 BC , and that Dis pater was only a translation of Plouton . In the mid-1st century BC , Cicero identifies Pluto with Dis , explaining that `` The earth in all its power and plenty is sacred to Father Dis , a name which is the same as Dives , ' The Wealthy One , ' as is the Greek Plouton . This is because everything is born of the earth and returns to it again . '' During the Roman Imperial era , the Greek geographer Strabo ( 1st century AD ) makes a distinction between Pluto and Hades . In writing of the mineral wealth of ancient Iberia ( Roman Spain ) , he says that among the Turdetani , it is `` Pluto , and not Hades , who inhabits the region down below . '' In the discourse On Mourning by the Greek author Lucian ( 2nd century AD ) , Pluto 's `` wealth '' is the dead he rules over in the abyss ( chasma ) ; the name Hades is reserved for the underworld itself . Other identifications ( edit ) In Greek religious practice , Pluto is sometimes seen as the `` chthonic Zeus '' ( Zeus Chthonios or Zeus Catachthonios ) , or at least as having functions or significance equivalent to those of Zeus but pertaining to the earth or underworld . In ancient Roman and Hellenistic religion , Pluto was identified with a number of other deities , including Summanus , the Roman god of nocturnal thunder ; Februus , the Roman god from whose purification rites the month of February takes its name ; the syncretic god Serapis , regarded as Pluto 's Egyptian equivalent ; and the Semitic god Muth ( Μούθ ) . Muth was described by Philo of Byblos as the equivalent of both Thanatos ( Death personified ) and Pluto . The ancient Greeks did not regard Pluto as `` death '' per se . Mythology ( edit ) See also : Abduction of Persephone Pluton ( 1884 -- 86 ) by Henri Chapu , part of a pair with a standing Persephone gathering flowers The best - known myth involving Pluto or Hades is the abduction of Persephone , also known as Kore ( `` the Maiden '' ) . The earliest literary versions of the myth are a brief mention in Hesiod 's Theogony and the extended narrative of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter ; in both these works , the ruler of the underworld is named as Hades ( `` the Hidden One '' ) . Hades is an unsympathetic figure , and Persephone 's unwillingness is emphasized . Increased usage of the name Plouton in religious inscriptions and literary texts reflects the influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries , which treated Pluto and Persephone as a divine couple who received initiates in the afterlife ; as such , Pluto was disassociated from the `` violent abductor '' of Kore . Two early works that give the abductor god 's name as Pluto are the Greek mythography traditionally known as the Library of `` Apollodorus '' ( 1st century BC ) and the Latin Fables of Hyginus ( ca . 64 BC -- AD 17 ) . The most influential version of the abduction myth is that of Ovid ( d . 17 or 18 AD ) , who tells the story in both the Metamorphoses ( Book 5 ) and the Fasti ( Book 4 ) . Another major retelling , also in Latin , is the long unfinished poem De raptu Proserpinae ( `` On the Abduction of Proserpina '' ) by Claudian ( d . 404 AD ) . Ovid uses the name Dis , not Pluto in these two passages , and Claudian uses Pluto only once ; translators and editors , however , sometimes supply the more familiar `` Pluto '' when other epithets appear in the source text . The abduction myth was a popular subject for Greek and Roman art , and recurs throughout Western art and literature , where the name `` Pluto '' becomes common ( see Pluto in Western art and literature below ) . Narrative details from Ovid and Claudian influence these later versions in which the abductor is named as Pluto , especially the role of Venus and Cupid in manipulating Pluto with love and desire . Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance , and certainly by the time of Natale Conti 's influential Mythologiae ( 1567 ) , the traditions pertaining to the various rulers of the classical underworld coalesced into a single mythology that made few if any distinctions among Hades , Pluto , Dis , and Orcus . Offspring ( edit ) Unlike his freely procreating brothers Zeus and Poseidon , Pluto is monogamous , and is rarely said to have children . In Orphic texts , the chthonic nymph Melinoe is the daughter of Persephone by Zeus disguised as Pluto , and the Eumenides ( `` The Kindly Ones '' ) are the offspring of Persephone and Zeus Chthonios , often identified as Pluto . The Augustan poet Vergil says that Pluto is the father of Allecto the Fury , whom he hates . The lack of a clear distinction between Pluto and `` chthonic Zeus '' confuses the question of whether in some traditions , now obscure , Persephone bore children to her husband . In the late 4th century AD , Claudian 's epic on the abduction motivates Pluto with a desire for children . The poem is unfinished , however , and anything Claudian may have known of these traditions is lost . Justin Martyr ( 2nd century AD ) alludes to children of Pluto , but neither names nor enumerates them . Hesychius ( 5th century AD ) mentions a `` son of Pluto . '' In his 14th - century mythography , Boccaccio records a tradition in which Pluto was the father of the divine personification Veneratio ( `` Reverence '' ) , noting that she had no mother because Proserpina ( the Latin name of Persephone ) was sterile . In The Faerie Queene ( 1590s ) , Edmund Spenser invents a daughter for Pluto whom he calls Lucifera . The character 's name was taken from the 16th - century mythography of Natale Conti , who used it as the Latin translation of Greek phosphor , `` light - bearer , '' a regular epithet of Hecate . Spenser incorporated aspects of the mysteries into The Faerie Queene . Pluto and Orpheus ( edit ) Orpheus before Pluto and Proserpina ( 1605 ) , by Jan Brueghel the Elder Orpheus was regarded as a founder and prophet of the mysteries called `` Orphic , '' `` Dionysiac , '' or `` Bacchic . '' Mythologized for his ability to entrance even animals and trees with his music , he was also credited in antiquity with the authorship of the lyrics that have survived as the Orphic Hymns , among them a hymn to Pluto . Orpheus 's voice and lyre - playing represented a medium of revelation or higher knowledge for the mystery cults . In his central myth , Orpheus visits the underworld in the hope of retrieving his bride , Eurydice , relying on the power of his music to charm the king and queen of Hades . Greek narratives of Orpheus 's descent and performance typically name the ruler of the underworld as Plouton , as for instance in the Bibliotheca . The myth demonstrates the importance of Pluto `` the Rich '' as the possessor of a quest - object . Orpheus performing before Pluto and Persephone was a common subject of ancient and later Western literature and art , and one of the most significant mythological themes of the classical tradition . The demonstration of Orpheus 's power depends on the normal obduracy of Pluto ; the Augustan poet Horace describes him as incapable of tears . Claudian , however , portrays the steely god as succumbing to Orpheus 's song so that `` with iron cloak he wipes his tears '' ( ferrugineo lacrimas deterget amictu ) , an image renewed by Milton in Il Penseroso ( 106 -- 107 ) : `` Such notes ... / Drew iron tears down Pluto 's cheek . '' The Greek writer Lucian ( ca . 125 -- after 180 AD ) suggests that Pluto 's love for his wife gave the ruler of the underworld a special sympathy or insight into lovers parted by death . In one of Lucian 's Dialogues of the Dead , Pluto questions Protesilaus , the first Greek hero killed in the Trojan War , who wishes to return to the world of the living . `` You are then in love with life ? '' Pluto asks . `` Such lovers we have here in plenty ; but they love an object , which none of them can obtain . '' Protesilaus explains , like an Orpheus in reverse , that he has left behind a young bride whose memory even the Lethe 's waters of forgetting have not erased from him . Pluto assures him that death will reunite them someday , but Protesilaus argues that Pluto himself should understand love and its impatience , and reminds the king of his grant to Orpheus and to Alcestis , who took her husband 's place in death and then was permitted at the insistence of Heracles to return to him . When Persephone intercedes for the dead warrior , Pluto grants the request at once , though allowing only one day for the reunion . Mysteries and cult ( edit ) Hydria ( ca . 340 BC ) depicting figures from the Eleusinian Mysteries As Pluto gained importance as an embodiment of agricultural wealth within the Eleusinian Mysteries , from the 5th century BC onward the name Hades was increasingly reserved for the underworld as a place . Neither Hades nor Pluto was one of the traditional Twelve Olympians , and Hades seems to have received limited cult , perhaps only at Elis , where the temple was opened once a year . During the time of Plato , the Athenians periodically honored the god called Plouton with the `` strewing of a couch '' ( tên klinên strôsai ) . At Eleusis , Plouton had his own priestess . Pluto was worshipped with Persephone as a divine couple at Knidos , Ephesos , Mytilene , and Sparta as well as at Eleusis , where they were known simply as God ( Theos ) and Goddess ( Thea ) . In the ritual texts of the mystery religions preserved by the so - called Orphic or Bacchic gold tablets , from the late 5th century BC onward the name Hades appears more frequently than Plouton , but in reference to the underground place : Plouton is the ruler who presides over it in a harmonious partnership with Persephone . By the end of the 4th century BC , the name Plouton appears in Greek metrical inscriptions . Two fragmentary tablets greet Pluto and Persephone jointly , and the divine couple appear as welcoming figures in a metrical epitaph : I know that even below the earth , if there is indeed a reward for the worthy ones , the first and foremost honors , nurse , shall be yours , next to Persephone and Pluto . Hesychius identifies Pluto with Eubouleus , but other ancient sources distinguish between these two underworld deities . In the Mysteries Eubouleus plays the role of a torchbearer , possibly a guide for the initiate 's return . In the view of Lewis Richard Farnell , Eubouleus was originally a title referring to the `` good counsel '' the ruler of the underworld was able to give and which was sought at Pluto 's dream oracles ; by the 2nd century BC , however , he had acquired a separate identity . Orphic Hymn to Pluto ( edit ) The Orphic Hymn to Pluto addresses the god as `` strong - spirited '' and the `` All - Receiver '' who commands death and is the master of mortals . His titles are given as Zeus Chthonios and Euboulos ( `` Good Counsel '' ) . In the hymn 's topography , Pluto 's dwelling is in Tartarus , simultaneously a `` meadow '' and `` thick - shaded and dark , '' where the Acheron encircles `` the roots of the earth . '' Hades is again the name of the place , here described as `` windless , '' and its gates , through which Pluto carried `` pure Demeter 's daughter '' as his bride , are located in an Attic cave within the district of Eleusis . The route from Persephone 's meadow to Hades crosses the sea . The hymn concludes : You alone were born to judge deeds obscure and conspicuous . Holiest and illustrious ruler of all , frenzied god , You delight in the worshiper 's respect and reverence . Come with favor and joy to the initiates . I summon you . The hymn is one of several examples of Greco - Roman prayer that express a desire for the presence of a deity , and has been compared to a similar epiclesis in the Acts of Thomas . Magic invocations ( edit ) The names of both Hades and Pluto appear also in the Greek Magical Papyri and curse tablets , with Hades typically referring to the underworld as a place , and Pluto regularly invoked as the partner of Persephone . Five Latin curse tablets from Rome , dating to the mid-1st century BC , promise Persephone and Pluto an offering of `` dates , figs , and a black pig '' if the curse is fulfilled by the desired deadline . The pig was a characteristic animal sacrifice to chthonic deities , whose victims were almost always black or dark in color . A set of curse tablets written in Doric Greek and found in a tomb addresses a Pasianax , `` Lord to All , '' sometimes taken as a title of Pluto , but more recently thought to be a magical name for the corpse . Pasianax is found elsewhere as an epithet of Zeus , or in the tablets may invoke a daimon like Abrasax . Sanctuaries of Pluto ( edit ) Main article : Ploutonion A sanctuary dedicated to Pluto was called a ploutonion ( Latin plutonium ) . The complex at Eleusis for the mysteries had a ploutonion regarded as the birthplace of the divine child Ploutos , in another instance of conflation or close association of the two gods . Greek inscriptions record an altar of Pluto , which was to be `` plastered '' , that is , resurfaced for a new round of sacrifices at Eleusis . One of the known ploutonia was in the sacred grove between Tralleis and Nysa , where a temple of Pluto and Persephone was located . Visitors sought healing and dream oracles . The ploutonion at Hierapolis , Phrygia , was connected to the rites of Cybele , but during the Roman Imperial era was subsumed by the cult of Apollo , as confirmed by archaeological investigations during the 1960s . It too was a dream oracle . The sites often seem to have been chosen because the presence of naturally occurring mephitic vapors was thought to indicate an opening to the underworld . In Italy , Avernus was considered an entrance to the underworld that produced toxic vapors , but Strabo seems not to think that it was a ploutonion . Iconography and attributes ( edit ) Plouton with cornucopia ( Attic red - figure amphora , ca . 470 BC ) In Eleusinian scenes ( edit ) Kevin Clinton attempted to distinguish the iconography of Hades , Plouton , Ploutos , and the Eleusinian Theos in 5th - century vase painting that depicts scenes from or relating to the mysteries . In Clinton 's schema , Plouton is a mature man , sometimes even white - haired ; Hades is also usually bearded and mature , but his darkness is emphasized in literary descriptions , represented in art by dark hair . Plouton 's most common attribute is a sceptre , but he also often holds a full or overflowing cornucopia ; Hades sometimes holds a horn , but it is depicted with no contents and should be understood as a drinking horn . Unlike Plouton , Hades never holds agrarian attributes such as stalks of grain . His chest is usually bare or only partly covered , whereas Plouton is fully robed ( exceptions , however , are admitted by the author ) . Plouton stands , often in the company of both Demeter and Kore , or sometimes one of the goddesses , but Hades almost always sits or reclines , usually with Persephone facing him . `` Confusion and disagreement '' about the interpretation of these images remain . The keys of Pluto ( edit ) Pluto ( 1592 ) by Agostino Carracci , probably influenced by the description in Vincenzo Cartari 's mythography , with the god holding his scepter and key , Cerberus at his side Attributes of Pluto mentioned in the Orphic Hymn to Pluto are his scepter , keys , throne , and horses . In the hymn , the keys are connected to his capacity for giving wealth to humanity , specifically the agricultural wealth of `` the year 's fruits . '' Pausanias explains the significance of Pluto 's key in describing a wondrously carved cedar chest at the Temple of Hera in Elis . Numerous deities are depicted , with one panel grouping Dionysus , Persephone , the nymphs and Pluto . Pluto holds a key because `` they say that what is called Hades has been locked up by Pluto , and that nobody will return back again therefrom . '' Natale Conti cites Pausanias in noting that keys are an attribute of Pluto as the scepter is of Jove ( Greek Zeus ) and the trident of Neptune ( Poseidon ) . A golden key ( chrusea klês ) was laid on the tongue of initiates by priests at Eleusis and was a symbol of the revelation they were obligated to keep secret . A key is among the attributes of other infernal deities such as Hecate , Anubis , and Persephone , and those who act as guardians or timekeepers , such as Janus and Aion . Aeacus ( Aiakos ) , one of the three mortal kings who became judges in the afterlife , is also a kleidouchos ( κλειδοῦχος ) , `` holder of the keys , '' and a priestly doorkeeper in the court of Pluto and Persephone . Vegetation and color ( edit ) According to the Stoic philosopher Cornutus ( 1st century AD ) , Pluto wore a wreath of phasganion , more often called xiphion , traditionally identified as a type of gladiolus . Dioscorides recorded medical uses for the plant . For extracting stings and thorns , xiphion was mixed with wine and frankincense to make a cataplasm . The plant was also used as an aphrodisiac and contraceptive . It grew in humid places . In an obscure passage , Cornutus seems to connect Pluto 's wearing of phasganion to an etymology for Avernus , which he derives from the word for `` air , '' perhaps through some association with the color glaukos , `` bluish grey , '' `` greenish '' or `` sea - colored , '' which might describe the plant 's leaves . Because the color could describe the sky , Cornutus regularly gives it divine connotations . Pluto 's twin sister was named Glauca . Ambiguity of color is characteristic of Pluto . Although both he and his realm are regularly described as dark , black , or gloomy , the god himself is sometimes seen as pale or having a pallor . Martianus Capella ( 5th century ) describes him as both `` growing pale in shadow , a fugitive from light '' and actively `` shedding darkness in the gloom of Tartarean night , '' crowned with a wreath made of ebony as suitable for the kingdom he governs . The horses of Pluto are usually black , but Ovid describes them as `` sky - colored '' ( caeruleus , from caelum , `` sky '' ) , which might be blue , greenish - blue , or dark blue . The Renaissance mythographer Natale Conti says wreaths of narcissus , maidenhair fern ( adianthus ) , and cypress were given to Pluto . In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter , Gaia ( Earth ) produced the narcissus at Zeus 's request as a snare for Persephone ; when she grasps it , a chasm opens up and the `` Host to Many '' ( Hades ) seizes her . Narcissus wreaths were used in early times to crown Demeter and Persephone , as well as the Furies ( Eumenides ) . The flower was associated with narcotic drugginess ( narkê , `` torpor '' ) , erotic fascination , and imminent death ; to dream of crowning oneself with narcissus was a bad sign . In the myth of Narcissus , the flower is created when a beautiful , self - absorbed youth rejects sexuality and is condemned to perpetual self - love along the Styx . Conti 's inclusion of adianthus ( Adiantum in modern nomenclature ) is less straightforward . The name , meaning `` unmoistened '' ( Greek adianton ) , was taken in antiquity to refer to the fern 's ability to repel water . The plant , which grew in wet places , was also called capillus veneris , `` hair of Venus , '' divinely dry when she emerged from the sea . Historian of medicine John M. Riddle has suggested that the adianthus was one of the ferns Dioscorides called asplenon and prescribed as a contraceptive ( atokios ) . The associations of Proserpine ( Persephone ) and the maidenhair are alluded to by Samuel Beckett in a 1946 poem , in which the self is a Platonic cave with capillaires , in French both `` maidenhair fern '' and `` blood vessels '' . An ageing specimen of Mediterranean cypress The cypress ( Greek cyparissus , Latin cupressus ) has traditional associations with mourning . In ancient Attica , households in mourning were garlanded with cypress , and it was used to fumigate the air during cremations . In the myth of Cyparissus , a youth was transformed into a cypress , consumed by grief over the accidental death of a pet stag . A `` white cypress '' is part of the topography of the underworld that recurs in the Orphic gold tablets as a kind of beacon near the entrance , perhaps to be compared with the Tree of Life in various world mythologies . The description of the cypress as `` white '' ( Greek leukē ) , since the botanical tree is dark , is symbolic , evoking the white garments worn by initiates or the clothing of a corpse , or the pallor of the dead . In Orphic funeral rites , it was forbidden to make coffins of cypress . The tradition of the mystery religions favors Pluto as a loving and faithful partner to Persephone , in contrast to the violence of Hades in early myths , but one ancient myth that preserves a lover for him parallels the abduction and also has a vegetative aspect . A Roman source says that Pluto fell in love with Leuca ( Greek Leukē , `` White '' ) , the most beautiful of the nymphs , and abducted her to live with him in his realm . After the long span of her life came to its end , he memorialized their love by creating a white tree in the Elysian Fields . The tree was the white poplar ( Greek leukē ) , the leaves of which are white on one side and dark on the other , representing the duality of upper and underworld . A wreath of white poplar leaves was fashioned by Heracles to mark his ascent from the underworld , an aition for why it was worn by initiates and by champion athletes participating in funeral games . Like other plants associated with Pluto , white poplar was regarded as a contraceptive in antiquity . The relation of this tree to the white cypress of the mysteries is debated . The helmet of invisibility ( edit ) The Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus uses the name Plouton instead of Hades in relating the tripartite division of sovereignty , the abduction of Persephone , and the visit of Orpheus to the underworld . This version of the theogony for the most part follows Hesiod ( see above ) , but adds that the three brothers were each given a gift by the Cyclopes to use in their battle against the Titans : Zeus thunder and lightning ; Poseidon a trident ; and Pluto a helmet ( kyneê ) . The helmet Pluto receives is presumably the magical Cap of Invisibility ( aidos kyneê ) , but the Bibliotheca is the only ancient source that explicitly says it belonged to Pluto . The verbal play of aidos , `` invisible , '' and Hades is thought to account for this attribution of the helmet to the ruler of the underworld , since no ancient narratives record his use or possession of it . Later authors such as Rabelais ( 16th century ) do attribute the helmet to Pluto . Erasmus calls it the `` helmet of Orcus '' and gives it as a figure of speech referring to those who conceal their true nature by a cunning device . Francis Bacon notes the proverbial usage : `` the helmet of Pluto , which maketh the politic man go invisible , is secrecy in the counsel , and celerity in the execution . '' Bident ( edit ) Pluto ( 1588 -- 89 ) with bident , chiaroscuro woodcut from a series on gods and goddesses by Hendrik Goltzius No ancient image of the ruler of the underworld can be said with certainty to show him with a bident , though the ornamented tip of his scepter may have been misunderstood at times as a bident . In the Roman world , the bident ( from bi - , `` two '' + dent - , `` teeth '' ) was an agricultural implement . It may also represent one of the three types of lightning wielded by Jupiter , the Roman counterpart of Zeus , and the Etruscan Tinia . The later notion that the ruler of the underworld wielded a trident or bident can perhaps be traced to a line in Seneca 's Hercules Furens ( `` Hercules Enraged '' ) , in which Father Dis , the Roman counterpart of Pluto , uses a three - pronged spear to drive off Hercules as he attempts to invade the underworld . Seneca calls Dis the `` Infernal Jove '' or the `` dire Jove '' ( the Jove who gives dire or ill omens , dirae ) , just as in the Greek tradition , Plouton is sometimes identified as a `` chthonic Zeus . '' That the trident and bident might be somewhat interchangeable is suggested by a Byzantine scholiast , who mentions Poseidon being armed with a bident . In the Middle Ages , classical underworld figures began to be depicted with a pitchfork . Early Christian writers had identified the classical underworld with Hell , and its denizens as demons or devils . In the Renaissance , the bident became a conventional attribute of Pluto . In an influential ceiling mural depicting the wedding of Cupid and Psyche , painted by Raphael 's workshop for the Villa Farnesina in 1517 , Pluto is shown holding the bident , with Cerberus at his side , while Neptune holds the trident . Perhaps influenced by this work , Agostino Carracci originally depicted Pluto with a bident in a preparatory drawing for his painting Pluto ( 1592 ) , in which the god ended up holding his characteristic key . In Caravaggio 's Giove , Nettuno e Plutone ( ca . 1597 ) , a ceiling mural based on alchemical allegory , it is Neptune who holds the bident . In Greek literature and Philosophy ( edit ) Persephone and Pluto or Hades on a pinax from Locri The name Plouton is first used in Greek literature by Athenian playwrights . In Aristophanes ' comedy The Frogs ( Batrachoi , 405 BC ) , in which `` the Eleusinian colouring is in fact so pervasive , '' the ruler of the underworld is one of the characters , under the name of Plouton . The play depicts a mock descent to the underworld by the god Dionysus to bring back one of the dead tragic playwrights in the hope of restoring Athenian theater to its former glory . Pluto is a silent presence onstage for about 600 lines presiding over a contest among the tragedians , then announces that the winner has the privilege of returning to the upper world . The play also draws on beliefs and imagery from Orphic and Dionysiac cult , and rituals pertaining to Ploutos ( Plutus , `` wealth '' ) . In a fragment from another play by Aristophanes , a character `` is comically singing of the excellent aspects of being dead '' , asking in reference to the tripartition of sovereignty over the world : And where do you think Pluto gets his name ( i.e. `` rich '' ) , if not because he took the best portion ? ... How much better are things below than what Zeus possesses ! To Plato , the god of the underworld was `` an agent in ( the ) beneficent cycle of death and rebirth '' meriting worship under the name of Plouton , a giver of spiritual wealth . In the dialogue Cratylus , Plato has Socrates explain the etymology of Plouton , saying that Pluto gives wealth ( ploutos ) , and his name means `` giver of wealth , which comes out of the earth beneath '' . Because the name Hades is taken to mean `` the invisible '' , people fear what they can not see ; although they are in error about the nature of this deity 's power , Socrates says , `` the office and name of the God really correspond '' : He is the perfect and accomplished Sophist , and the great benefactor of the inhabitants of the other world ; and even to us who are upon earth he sends from below exceeding blessings . For he has much more than he wants down there ; wherefore he is called Pluto ( or the rich ) . Note also , that he will have nothing to do with men while they are in the body , but only when the soul is liberated from the desires and evils of the body . Now there is a great deal of philosophy and reflection in that ; for in their liberated state he can bind them with the desire of virtue , but while they are flustered and maddened by the body , not even father Cronos himself would suffice to keep them with him in his own far - famed chains . Since `` the union of body and soul is not better than the loosing , '' death is not an evil . Walter Burkert thus sees Pluto as a `` god of dissolution . '' Among the titles of Pluto was Isodaitēs , `` divider into equal portions , '' a title that connects him to the fate goddesses the Moirai . Isodaitēs was also a cult title for Dionysus and Helios . In ordering his ideal city , Plato proposed a calendar in which Pluto was honored as a benefactor in the twelfth month , implicitly ranking him as one of the twelve principal deities . In the Attic calendar , the twelfth month , more or less equivalent to June , was Skirophorion ; the name may be connected to the rape of Persephone . Theogonies and cosmology ( edit ) Euhemerism and latinization ( edit ) In the theogony of Euhemerus ( 4th century BC ) , the gods were treated as mortal rulers whose deeds were immortalized by tradition . Ennius translated Euhemerus into Latin about a hundred years later , and a passage from his version was in turn preserved by the early Christian writer Lactantius . Here the union of Saturn ( the Roman equivalent of Cronus ) and Ops , an Italic goddess of abundance , produces Jupiter ( Greek Zeus ) , Juno ( Hera ) , Neptune , Pluto , and Glauca : Then Saturn took Ops to wife . Titan , the elder brother , demanded the kingship for himself . Vesta their mother , with their sisters Ceres ( Demeter ) and Ops , persuaded Saturn not to give way to his brother in the matter . Titan was less good - looking than Saturn ; for that reason , and also because he could see his mother and sisters working to have it so , he conceded the kingship to Saturn , and came to terms with him : if Saturn had a male child born to him , it would not be reared . This was done to secure reversion of the kingship to Titan 's children . They then killed the first son that was born to Saturn . Next came twin children , Jupiter and Juno . Juno was given to Saturn to see while Jupiter was secretly removed and given to Vesta to be brought up without Saturn 's knowledge . In the same way without Saturn knowing , Ops bore Neptune and hid him away . In her third labor Ops bore another set of twins , Pluto and Glauce . ( Pluto in Latin is Diespiter ; some call him Orcus . ) Saturn was shown his daughter Glauce but his son Pluto was hidden and removed . Glauce then died young . That is the pedigree , as written , of Jupiter and his brothers ; that is how it has been passed down to us in holy scripture . In this theogony , which Ennius introduced into Latin literature , Saturn , `` Titan , '' Vesta , Ceres , and Ops are siblings ; Glauca is the twin of Pluto and dies mysteriously young . There are several mythological figures named Glauca ; the sister of Pluto may be the Glauca who in Cicero 's account of the three aspects of Diana conceived the third with the equally mysterious Upis . This is the genealogy for Pluto that Boccaccio used in his Genealogia Deorum Gentilium and in his lectures explicating the Divine Comedy of Dante . In Book 3 of the Sibylline Oracles , dating mostly to the 2nd century AD , Rhea gives birth to Pluto as she passes by Dodona , `` where the watery paths of the River Europus flowed , and the water ran into the sea , merged with the Peneius . This is also called the Stygian river . '' Orphic and Philosophical systems ( edit ) The Orphic theogonies are notoriously varied , and Orphic cosmology influenced the varying Gnostic theogonies of late antiquity . Clementine literature ( 4th century AD ) preserves a theogony with explicit Orphic influence that also draws on Hesiod , yielding a distinctive role for Pluto . When the primordial elements came together by orderly cyclonic force , they produced a generative sphere , the `` egg '' from which the primeval Orphic entity Phanes is born and the world is formed . The release of Phanes and his ascent to the heavenly top of the world - egg causes the matter left in the sphere to settle in relation to weight , creating the tripartite world of the traditional theogonies : Its lower part , the heaviest element , sinks downwards , and is called Pluto because of its gravity , weight , and great quantity ( plêthos ) of matter . After the separation of this heavy element in the middle part of the egg the waters flow together , which they call Poseidon . The purest and noblest element , the fire , is called Zeus , because its nature is glowing ( ζέουσα , zeousa ) . It flies right up into the air , and draws up the spirit , now called Metis , that was left in the underlying moisture . And when this spirit has reached the summit of the ether , it is devoured by Zeus , who in his turn begets the intelligence ( σύνεσις , sunesis ) , also called Pallas . And by this artistic intelligence the etherial artificer creates the whole world . This world is surrounded by the air , which extends from Zeus , the very hot ether , to the earth ; this air is called Hera . This cosmogony interprets Hesiod allegorically , and so the heaviest element is identified not as the Earth , but as the netherworld of Pluto . ( In modern geochemistry , plutonium is the heaviest primordial element . ) Supposed etymologies are used to make sense of the relation of physical process to divine name ; Plouton is here connected to plêthos ( abundance ) . In the Stoic system , Pluto represented the lower region of the air , where according to Seneca ( 1st century AD ) the soul underwent a kind of purgatory before ascending to the ether . Seneca 's contemporary Cornutus made use of the traditional etymology of Pluto 's name for Stoic theology . The Stoics believed that the form of a word contained the original truth of its meaning , which over time could become corrupted or obscured . Plouton derived from ploutein , `` to be wealthy , '' Cornutus said , because `` all things are corruptible and therefore are ' ultimately consigned to him as his property . ' '' Within the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic traditions , Pluto was allegorized as the region where souls are purified , located between the moon ( as represented by Persephone ) and the sun . Neoplatonists sometimes interpreted the Eleusinian Mysteries as a fabula of celestial phenomena : Authors tell the fable that Ceres was Proserpina 's mother , and that Proserpina while playing one day was raped by Pluto . Her mother searched for her with lighted torches ; and it was decreed by Jupiter that the mother should have her daughter for fifteen days in the month , but Pluto for the rest , the other fifteen . This is nothing but that the name Ceres is used to mean the earth , called Ceres on analogy with crees ( ' you may create ' ) , for all things are created from her . By Proserpina is meant the moon , and her name is on analogy with prope serpens ( ' creeping near ' ) , for she is moved nearer to the earth than the other planets . She is called earth 's daughter , because her substance has more of earth in it than of the other elements . By Pluto is meant the shadow that sometimes obstructs the moon . Plouton Helios ( edit ) Jupiter , Neptune , and Pluto , ceiling mural ( ca . 1597 ) by Caravaggio ( see description under Fine art below ) A dedicatory inscription from Smyrna describes a 1st -- 2nd century sanctuary to `` God Himself '' as the most exalted of a group of six deities , including clothed statues of Plouton Helios and Koure Selene , `` Pluto the Sun '' and `` Kore the Moon . '' The status of Pluto and Kore as a divine couple is marked by what the text describes as a `` linen embroidered bridal curtain . '' The two are placed as bride and groom within an enclosed temple , separately from the other deities cultivated at the sanctuary . Plouton Helios is mentioned in other literary sources in connection with Koure Selene and Helios Apollon ; the sun on its nighttime course was sometimes envisioned as traveling through the underworld on its return to the east . Apuleius describes a rite in which the sun appears at midnight to the initiate at the gates of Proserpina ; it has been suggested that this midnight sun could be Plouton Helios . The Smyrna inscription also records the presence of Helios Apollon at the sanctuary . As two forms of Helios , Apollo and Pluto pose a dichotomy : Helios Apollon Plouton Helios One Many clarity invisibility bright dark memory oblivion It has been argued that the sanctuary was in the keeping of a Pythagorean sodality or `` brotherhood '' . The relation of Orphic beliefs to the mystic strand of Pythagoreanism , or of these to Platonism and Neoplatonism , is complex and much debated . Plutonius ( edit ) Serapis with moon and sun on oil lamp In the Hellenistic era , the title or epithet Plutonius is sometimes affixed to the names of other deities . In the Hermetic Corpus , Jupiter Plutonius `` rules over earth and sea , and it is he who nourishes mortal things that have soul and bear fruit . '' In Ptolemaic Alexandria , at the site of a dream oracle , Serapis was identified with Aion Plutonius . Gilles Quispel conjectured that this figure results from the integration of the Orphic Phanes into Mithraic religion at Alexandria , and that he `` assures the eternity of the city , '' where the birth of Aion was celebrated at the sanctuary of Kore on January 6 . In Latin , Plutonius can be an adjective that simply means `` of or pertaining to Pluto . '' Neoplatonic demiurge ( edit ) The Neoplatonist Proclus ( 5th century AD ) considered Pluto the third demiurge , a sublunar demiurge who was also identified variously with Poseidon or Hephaestus . This idea is present in Renaissance Neoplatonism , as for instance in the cosmology of Marsilio Ficino ( 1433 -- 99 ) , who translated Orphic texts into Latin for his own use . Ficino saw the sublunar demiurge as `` a daemonic ' many - headed ' sophist , a magus , an enchanter , a fashioner of images and reflections , a shape - changer of himself and of others , a poet in a way of being and of not - being , a royal Pluto . '' This demiurgic figure identified with Pluto is also `` ' a purifier of souls ' who presides over the magic of love and generation and who uses a fantastic counter-art to mock , but also ... to supplement , the divine icastic or truly imitative art of the sublime translunar Demiurge . '' In Western art and literature ( edit ) Etruscan Charun presiding over an execution Christianization ( edit ) Christian writers of late antiquity sought to discredit the competing gods of Roman and Hellenistic religions , often adopting the euhemerizing approach in regarding them not as divinities , but as people glorified through stories and cultic practices and thus not true deities worthy of worship . The infernal gods , however , retained their potency , becoming identified with the Devil and treated as demonic forces by Christian apologists . One source of Christian revulsion toward the chthonic gods was the arena . Attendants in divine costume , among them a `` Pluto '' who escorted corpses out , were part of the ceremonies of the gladiatorial games . Tertullian calls the mallet - wielding figure usually identified as the Etruscan Charun the `` brother of Jove , '' that is , Hades / Pluto / Dis , an indication that the distinctions among these denizens of the underworld were becoming blurred in a Christian context . Prudentius , in his poetic polemic against the religious traditionalist Symmachus , describes the arena as a place where savage vows were fulfilled on an altar to Pluto ( solvit ad aram / Plutonis fera vota ) , where fallen gladiators were human sacrifices to Dis and Charon received their souls as his payment , to the delight of the underworld Jove ( Iovis infernalis ) . Medieval mythography ( edit ) Medieval mythographies , written in Latin , continue the conflation of Greek and Roman deities begun by the ancient Roman themselves . Perhaps because the name Pluto was used in both traditions , it appears widely in these Latin sources for the classical ruler of the underworld , who is also seen as the double , ally , or adjunct to the figure in Christian mythology known variously as the Devil , Satan , or Lucifer . The classical underworld deities became casually interchangeable with Satan as an embodiment of Hell . For instance , in the 9th century , Abbo Cernuus , the only witness whose account of the Siege of Paris survives , called the invading Vikings the `` spawn of Pluto . '' In the Little Book on Images of the Gods , Pluto is described as an intimidating personage sitting on a throne of sulphur , holding the scepter of his realm in his right hand , and with his left strangling a soul . Under his feet three - headed Cerberus held a position , and beside him he had three Harpies . From his golden throne of sulphur flowed four rivers , which were called , as is known , Lethe , Cocytus , Phlegethon and Acheron , tributaries of the Stygian swamp . This work derives from that of the Third Vatican Mythographer , possibly one Albricus or Alberic , who presents often extensive allegories and devotes his longest chapter , including an excursus on the nature of the soul , to Pluto . Medieval and Renaissance literature ( edit ) Albrecht Dürer , Abduction of Proserpine on a Unicorn ( 1516 ) In Dante 's Divine Comedy ( written 1308 -- 1321 ) , Pluto presides over the fourth circle of Hell , to which the greedy are condemned . The Italian form of the name is Pluto , taken by some commentators to refer specifically to Plutus as the god of wealth who would preside over the torment of those who hoarded or squandered it in life . Dante 's Pluto is greeted as `` the great enemy '' and utters the famously impenetrable line Papé Satàn , papé Satàn aleppe . Much of this Canto is devoted to the power of Fortuna to give and take away . Entrance into the fourth circle has marked a downward turn in the poet 's journey , and the next landmark after he and his guide cross from the circle is the Stygian swamp , through which they pass on their way to the city of Dis ( Italian Dite ) . Dante 's clear distinction between Pluto and Dis suggests that he had Plutus in mind in naming the former . The city of Dis is the `` citadel of Lower Hell '' where the walls are garrisoned by fallen angels and Furies . Pluto is treated likewise as a purely Satanic figure by the 16th - century Italian poet Tasso throughout his epic Jerusalem Delivered , in which `` great Dis , great Pluto '' is invoked in the company of `` all ye devils that lie in deepest hell . '' Influenced by Ovid and Claudian , Geoffrey Chaucer ( 1343 -- 1400 ) developed the myth of Pluto and Proserpina ( the Latin name of Persephone ) in English literature . Like earlier medieval writers , Chaucer identifies Pluto 's realm with Hell as a place of condemnation and torment , and describes it as `` derk and lowe '' ( `` dark and low '' ) . But Pluto 's major appearance in the works of Chaucer comes as a character in `` The Merchant 's Tale , '' where Pluto is identified as the `` Kyng of Fayerye '' ( Fairy King ) . As in the anonymous romance Sir Orfeo ( ca . 1300 ) , Pluto and Proserpina rule over a fantastical world that melds classical myth and fairyland . Chaucer has the couple engage in a comic battle of the sexes that undermines the Christian imagery in the tale , which is Chaucer 's most sexually explicit . The Scottish poet William Dunbar ca . 1503 also described Pluto as a folkloric supernatural being , `` the elrich incubus / in cloke of grene '' ( `` the eldritch incubus in cloak of green '' ) , who appears among the courtiers of Cupid . The name Pluto for the classical ruler of the underworld was further established in English literature by Arthur Golding , whose translation of Ovid 's Metamorphoses ( 1565 ) was of great influence on William Shakespeare , Christopher Marlowe , and Edmund Spenser . Golding translates Ovid 's Dis as Pluto , a practice that prevails among English translators , despite John Milton 's use of the Latin Dis in Paradise Lost . The Christian perception of the classical underworld as Hell influenced Golding 's translation practices ; for instance , Ovid 's tenebrosa sede tyrannus / exierat ( `` the tyrant ( Dis ) had gone out of his shadowy realm '' ) becomes `` the prince of fiends forsook his darksome hole '' . Pluto 's court as a literary setting could bring together a motley assortment of characters . In Huon de Méry 's 13th - century poem `` The Tournament of the Antichrist '' , Pluto rules over a congregation of `` classical gods and demigods , biblical devils , and evil Christians . '' In the 15th - century dream allegory The Assembly of Gods , the deities and personifications are `` apparelled as medieval nobility '' basking in the `` magnyfycence '' of their `` lord Pluto , '' who is clad in a `` smoky net '' and reeking of sulphur . Throughout the Renaissance , images and ideas from classical antiquity entered popular culture through the new medium of print and through pageants and other public performances at festivals . The Fête - Dieu at Aix - en - Provence in 1462 featured characters costumed as a number of classical deities , including Pluto , and Pluto was the subject of one of seven pageants presented as part of the 1521 Midsummer Eve festival in London . During the 15th century , no mythological theme was brought to the stage more often than Orpheus 's descent , with the court of Pluto inspiring fantastical stagecraft . Leonardo da Vinci designed a set with a rotating mountain that opened up to reveal Pluto emerging from the underworld ; the drawing survives and was the basis for a modern recreation . Opera and ballet ( edit ) The tragic descent of the hero - musician Orpheus to the underworld to retrieve his bride , and his performance at the court of Pluto and Proserpina , offered compelling material for librettists and composers of opera ( see List of Orphean operas ) and ballet . Pluto also appears in works based on other classical myths of the underworld . As a singing role , Pluto is almost always written for a bass voice , with the low vocal range representing the depths and weight of the underworld , as in Monteverdi and Rinuccini 's L'Orfeo ( 1607 ) and Il ballo delle ingrate ( 1608 ) . In their ballo , a form of ballet with vocal numbers , Cupid invokes Pluto from the underworld to lay claim to `` ungrateful '' women who were immune to love . Pluto 's part is considered particularly virtuosic , and a reviewer at the première described the character , who appeared as if from a blazing Inferno , as `` formidable and awesome in sight , with garments as given him by poets , but burdened with gold and jewels . '' Jean Raoux 's Orpheus and Eurydice ( 1718 -- 20 ) , with Pluto and Proserpina releasing the couple The role of Pluto is written for a bass in Peri 's Euridice ( 1600 ) ; Caccini 's Euridice ( 1602 ) ; Rossi 's Orfeo ( 1647 ) ; Cesti 's Il pomo d'oro ( 1668 ) ; Sartoris 's Orfeo ( 1672 ) ; Lully 's Alceste , a tragédie en musique ( 1674 ) ; Charpentier 's chamber opera La descente d'Orphée aux enfers ( 1686 ) ; Telemann 's Orpheus ( 1726 ) ; and Rameau 's Hippolyte et Aricie ( 1733 ) . Pluto was a baritone in Lully 's Proserpine ( 1680 ) , which includes a duo dramatizing the conflict between the royal underworld couple that is notable for its early use of musical characterization . Perhaps the most famous of the Orpheus operas is Offenbach 's satiric Orpheus in the Underworld ( 1858 ) , in which a tenor sings the role of Pluton , disguised in the giddily convoluted plotting as Aristée ( Aristaeus ) , a farmer . Scenes set in Pluto 's realm were orchestrated with instrumentation that became conventionally `` hellish '' , established in Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo as two cornets , three trombones , a bassoon , and a régale . Pluto has also been featured as a role in ballet . In Lully 's `` Ballet of Seven Planets ' '' interlude from Cavalli 's opera Ercole amante ( `` Hercules in Love '' ) , Louis XIV himself danced as Pluto and other characters ; it was a spectacular flop . Pluto appeared in Noverre 's lost La descente d'Orphée aux Enfers ( 1760s ) . Gaétan Vestris danced the role of the god in Florian Deller 's Orefeo ed Euridice ( 1763 ) . The Persephone choreographed by Robert Joffrey ( 1952 ) was based on André Gide 's line `` king of winters , the infernal Pluto . '' Fine art ( edit ) Rembrandt 's Abduction of Proserpina ( ca . 1631 ) The abduction of Proserpina by Pluto was the scene from the myth most often depicted by artists , who usually follow Ovid 's version . The influential emblem book Iconologia of Cesare Ripa ( 1593 , second edition 1603 ) presents the allegorical figure of Rape with a shield on which the abduction is painted . Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburg , the first teacher of Rembrandt , echoed Ovid in showing Pluto as the target of Cupid 's arrow while Venus watches her plan carried out ( location of painting unknown ) . The treatment of the scene by Rubens is similar . Rembrandt incorporates Claudian 's more passionate characterizations . The performance of Orpheus in the court of Pluto and Proserpina was also a popular subject . Major artists who produced works depicting Pluto include : Dürer , Abduction of Proserpine on a Unicorn ( 1516 ) , etching ( pictured under Medieval and Renaissance literature above ) . Dürer 's first English biographer called this work `` a wild , weird conception '' that `` produces a most uncomfortable , shuddering impression on the beholder . '' The source or significance of the unicorn as the form of transport is unclear ; Dürer 's preparatory drawing showed a conventional horse . Pluto seems to be presented in a manner that recalls the leader of the Wild Hunt . Caravaggio , Jupiter , Neptune , and Pluto ( Italian Giove , Nettuno e Plutone , ca . 1597 ) , a ceiling mural ( pictured under Theogonies and cosmology above ) intended for viewing from below , hence the unusual perspective . Caravaggio created the work for a room adjacent to the alchemical distillery of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte , his most important patron . The three gods hover around a translucent globe that represents the world : Jupiter with his eagle , Neptune holding a bident , and Pluto accompanied by a bluish - gray horse and a Cerberus who resembles a three - headed border collie more than a hellhound . In addition to personifying the classical elements air , water , and earth , the three figures represent `` an allegory of the applied science of alchemy '' . Jan Brueghel the Elder , Orpheus before Pluto and Proserpina ( 1604 ) , painting . Bernini , Pluto and Proserpina ( 1621 -- 22 ) , also known as The Rape of Proserpina , sculpture with a Cerberus looking in three different directions . Rembrandt , Abduction of Proserpina ( ca . 1631 ) , painting influenced by Rubens ( via the engraving of his student Pieter Soutman ) . Rembrandt 's leonine Pluto draws on Claudian 's description of the god as like a ravening lion . Modern literature ( edit ) After the Renaissance , literary interest in the abduction myth waned until the revival of classical myth among the Romantics . The work of mythographers such as J.G. Frazer and Jane Ellen Harrison helped inspire the recasting of myths in modern terms by Victorian and Modernist writers . In Tess of the d'Urbervilles ( 1891 ) , Thomas Hardy portrays Alec d'Urberville as `` a grotesque parody of Pluto / Dis '' exemplifying the late - Victorian culture of male domination , in which women were consigned to `` an endless breaking ... on the wheel of biological reproduction . '' A similar figure is found in The Lost Girl ( 1920 ) by D.H. Lawrence , where the character Ciccio acts as Pluto to Alvina 's Persephone , `` the deathly - lost bride ... paradoxically obliterated and vitalised at the same time by contact with Pluto / Dis '' in `` a prelude to the grand design of rebirth . '' The darkness of Pluto is both a source of regeneration , and of `` merciless annihilation . '' Lawrence takes up the theme elsewhere in his work ; in The First Lady Chatterley ( 1926 , an early version of Lady Chatterley 's Lover ) , Connie Chatterley sees herself as a Persephone and declares `` she 'd rather be married to Pluto than Plato , '' casting her earthy gamekeeper lover as the former and her philosophy - spouting husband as the latter . Percy jackson series ( edit ) In Rick Riordan 's young adult fantasy series The Heroes of Olympus , the character Hazel Levesque is the daughter of Pluto , god of riches . She is one of seven characters with a parent from classical mythology . In The Son of Neptune , the second volume in the series , Riordan describes Pluto as `` cool ... He just got bad luck when the gods were dividing up the world ... Jupiter got the sky , Neptune got the sea , and Pluto got the shaft . '' In Riordan 's explanation , Hades `` was more of a death god , '' but acquired his identity as a god of wealth among the Romans , along with a new name . Scientific terms ( edit ) Scientific terms derived from the name of Pluto include : Pluto , the name of the dwarf planet , with related terms plutoid and plutino plutonium , the heaviest primordial element pluton , a term of petrology plutonism , a geologic theory Notes ( edit ) Jump up ^ William Hansen , Classical Mythology : A Guide to the Mythical World of the Greeks and Romans ( Oxford University Press , 2005 ) , p. 182 . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , , p. 180 . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , pp. 180 -- 181 . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , p. 182 , makes the distinction . Jump up ^ Lewis Richard Farnell , The Cults of the Greek States ( Clarendon Press , 1907 ) , vol. 3 , p. 281 . Jump up ^ Odyssey 5.125 -- 128 : And so it was when Demeter of the lovely hair , yielding / to her desire , lay down with Iasion and loved him / in a thrice - turned field ( translation of Richmond Lattimore ) . Jump up ^ Hesiod , Theogony 969 -- 74 ; Apostolos N. Athanassakis , Hesiod . Theogony , Works and Days , Shield ( Johns Hopkins University Press , 1983 , 2004 ) , p. 56 . Jump up ^ Athanassakis , Hesiod , p. 56 . Jump up ^ Emily Vermeule , Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry ( University of California Press , 1979 ) , pp. 37 , 219 ; Hendrik Wagenvoort , `` The Origin of the Ludi Saeculares , '' in Studies in Roman Literature , Culture and Religion ( Brill , 1956 ) , p. 198 . Jump up ^ Hesiod . `` Works and Days '' . Perseus Digital Library . Retrieved 19 February 2015 . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , pp. 162 and 182 , citing Homer , Iliad 9.158 -- 159 . Euphemism is a characteristic way of speaking of divine figures associated with the dead and the underworld ; Joseph William Hewitt , `` The Propitiation of Zeus , '' Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 19 ( 1908 ) , p. 66 , considers euphemism a form of propitiation . Jump up ^ Plato , Cratylus 403a ; Glenn R. Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City : A Historical Interpretation of the Laws ( Princeton University Press , 1993 ) , pp. 452 -- 453 . Jump up ^ Fernando Navarro Antolin , Lygdamus : Corpus Tibullianum III. 1 -- 6 , Lygdami Elegiarum Liber ( Brill , 1996 ) , pp. 145 -- 146 . Jump up ^ Charlotte R. Long , The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome ( Brill , 1987 ) , p. 179 ; Phyllis Fray Bober , `` Cernunnos : Origin and Transformation of a Celtic Divinity , '' American Journal of Archaeology 55 ( 1951 ) , p. 28 , examples in Greek and Roman art in note 98 ; Hewitt , `` The Propitiation of Zeus , '' p. 65 . Jump up ^ Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow , pp. 101 -- 102 ; Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City , pp. 452 -- 453 ; John J. Hermann , Jr. , `` Demeter - Isis or the Egyptian Demeter ? A Graeco - Roman Sculpture from an Egyptian Workshop in Boston '' in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 114 ( 1999 ) , p. 88 . Jump up ^ Pluto Latine est Dis pater , alii Orcum vocant ( `` In Latin , Pluto is Dis Pater ; others call him Orcus '' ) : Ennius , Euhemerus frg. 7 in the edition of Vahlen = Var. 78 = E.H. Warmington , Remains of Old Latin ( Heinemann , 1940 ) , vol. 1 , p. 421 . The Augustan poet Horace retains the Greek accusative form of the noun ( Plutona instead of Latin Plutonem ) at Carmen 2.14. 7 , as noted by John Conington , P. Vergili Maronis Opera ( London , 1883 ) , vol. 3 , p. 36 . Jump up ^ H.D. Jocelyn , The Tragedies of Ennius ( Cambridge University Press , 1967 ) , p. 331 , with reference to Kurt Latte , Römische Religionsgeschichte ( C.H. Beck , 1967 , 1992 ) , p. 246ff . Jump up ^ Cicero , De natura deorum 2.66 , translation of John MacDonald Ross ( Penguin Books , 1972 ) : Terrena autem vis omnis atque natura Diti patri dedicata est , qui dives , ut apud Graecos Πλούτων quia et recidunt omnia in terras et oriuntur e terris . Jump up ^ Strabo 3.2. 9 , citing Poseidonius as his source , who in turn cites Demetrius of Phalerum on the silver mines of Attica , where `` the people dig as strenuously as if they expected to bring up Pluto himself '' ( Loeb Classical Library translation , in the LacusCurtius edition ) . The 16th - century mythographer Natale Conti describes Pluto 's imperium as `` the Spains and all the places bordering the setting sun '' ( Mythologiae 2.9 , edition of 1651 , p. 173 ; cf . Strabo 3.12 ) . Jump up ^ Lucian , On Mourning ( see Greek text ) ; Peter Bolt , Jesus ' Defeat of Death : Persuading Mark 's Early Readers ( Cambridge University Press , 2003 ) discusses this passage ( pp. 126 -- 127 ) and Greco - Roman concepts of the underworld as a context for Christian eschatology passim . Jump up ^ Noel Robertson , Religion and Reconciliation in Greek Cities : The Sacred Laws of Selinus and Cyrene ( Oxford University Press , 2010 ) , p. 102 , citing passages from the Orphic Hymns , throughout which Plouton is the ruler of the underworld , and Hades is the name of the place itself . Jump up ^ Hewitt , `` The Propitiation of Zeus , '' p. 74 , asserts that `` Zeus Catachthonius seems certainly to be Pluto . '' Other deities to whom the title Katachthonios was affixed include Demeter , Persephone , and the Furies ; Eugene Lane , `` The Epithets of Men , '' Corpus monumentorum religionis dei Menis : Interpretation and Testimonia ( Brill , 1976 ) , vol. 3 , p. 77 , citing the entry on Katachthonioi in Roscher , Lexikon II , i , col . 998ff . Jump up ^ Zeus Chthonius and Pluto are seen as having `` the same significance '' in the Orphic Hymns and in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus ( 6.156 ff . ) , by Hewitt , `` The Propitiation of Zeus , '' p. 74 , note 7 . Overlapping functions are also suggested when Hesiod advises farmers to pray to `` Zeus Chthonius and to holy Demeter that they may cause the holy corn of Demeter to teem in full perfection . '' This form of Zeus receives the black victims typically offered to underworld deities . Jump up ^ Martianus Capella , De Nuptiis 2.161 . Jump up ^ Martianus Capella , De nuptiis 2.149 ; Isidore of Seville , Etymologies 5.33. 4 ; Servius , note to Vergil 's Georgics 1.43 ( Vergil refrains from naming the god ) ; John Lydus , De mensibus 4.25 . Jump up ^ Plutarch , De Iside 27 ( 361e ) : `` In fact , men assert that Pluto is none other than Serapis and that Persephone is Isis , even as Archemachus of Euboea has said , and also Heracleides Ponticus who holds the oracle in Canopus to be an oracle of Pluto '' ( Loeb Classical Library translation of 1936 , LacusCurtius edition ) . Also spelled Sarapis . See Jaime Alvar , Romanising Oriental Gods : Myth , Salvation , and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele , Isis , and Mithras , translated by Richard Gordon ( Brill , 2008 ) , pp. 53 online and 58 ; Hermann , `` Demeter - Isis or the Egyptian Demeter ? '' , p. 84 . Jump up ^ Eusebius , Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10. 34 , attributing this view to the semi-legendary Phoenician author Sanchuniathon via Philo of Byblos . In addition to asserting that Muth was equivalent to both Thanatos ( Death personified ) and Pluto , Philo said he was the son of Cronus and Rhea . See entry on `` Mot , '' Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible , edited by Karel van der Toorn , Bob Becking and Pieter Willem van der Horst ( William B. Eerdmans Publishing , 1999 , 2nd ed . ) , p. 598 , and Religions of the Ancient World : A Guide , edited by Sarah Iles Johnston ( Harvard University Press , 2004 ) , p. 479 . Philo 's cosmogony as summarized by Eusebius bears some similarities to that of Hesiod and the Orphics ; see Sanchuniathon 's history of the gods and `` Theogonies and cosmology '' below . Philo said that these were reinterpretations of `` Phoenician '' beliefs by the Greeks . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , p. 182 . Jump up ^ Diane Rayor , The Homeric Hymns ( University of California Press , 2004 ) , pp. 107 -- 109 . Jump up ^ Christos Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow : Fourth - century Attic Funerary Epigrams ( Berlin : Walter de Gruyter , 2008 ) , pp. 101 -- 102 . Jump up ^ Sources used to prepare this article uniformly refer to the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus as the Library of Apollodorus . Recent scholarship prefers to view the authorship of this work as anonymous ; see Bibliotheca ( Pseudo-Apollodorus ) . Jump up ^ Hyginus , Fabulae 146 . The late - antique mythographer Fulgentius also names the ruler of the underworld as Pluto , a practice continued by medieval mythographers . Jump up ^ Andrew D. Radford , The Lost Girls : Demeter - Persephone and the Literary Imagination , 1850 -- 1930 ( Editions Rodopi , 2007 ) , p. 24 . For an extensive comparison of Ovid 's two treatments of the myth , with reference to versions such as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter , see Stephen Hinds , The Metamorphosis of Persephone : Ovid and the Self - Conscious Muse ( Cambridge University Press , 1987 ) , limited preview online . Jump up ^ In Book 6 of the Aeneid ( the catabasis of Aeneas ) , Vergil also names the ruler of the underworld more often as Dis than Pluto . Jump up ^ See also , for instance , J.J.L. Smolenaars , Statius . Thebaid VII : A Commentary ( Brill , 1994 ) , passim , or John G. Fitch , Seneca 's ' Hercules Furens ' ( Cornell University Press , 1987 ) , passim , where the ruler of the underworld is referred to as `` Pluto '' in the English commentary , but as `` Dis '' or with other epithets in the Latin text . Jump up ^ Radford , The Lost Girls , p. 22 et passim . Jump up ^ Natale Conti observes ( Mythologiae 2.9 , edition of 1651 , p. 174 ) that before the abduction , Pluto was the only childless bachelor among the gods ( solus omnium deorum coelibem et filiis carentem vitam traduceret ) . The nymph Minthē was the concubine ( pallakis , Strabo 8.3. 14 ) of the ruler of the underworld under the name of Hades , but no ancient source records Pluto in this role ; Conti , however , describes Minthē ( Menthe ) as the pellex of Pluto . Jump up ^ Orphic fragments 197 and 360 ( edition of Kern ) and Orphic Hymn 70 , as cited by Helene P. Foley , Hymn to Demeter ( Princeton University Press , 1994 ) , p. 110 , note 97 . Jump up ^ Orphic Hymn 71 . Jump up ^ Robertson , Religion and Reconciliation in Greek Cities , p. 102 . Robertson holds that in the Orphic tradition , the Eumenides are distinguished from the Furies ( Greek Erinyes ) . Vergil conflates the Eumenides and the Furies , and elsewhere says that Night ( Nox ) is their mother . Proclus , in his commentary on the Cratylus of Plato , provides passages from the Orphic Rhapsodies that give two different genealogies of the Eumenides , one making them the offspring of Persephone and Pluto ( or Hades ) and the other reporting a prophecy that they were to be born to Persephone and Apollo ( Robertson , Religion and Reconciliation , p. 101 ) . Jump up ^ Vergil , Aeneid 7.327 : odit et ipse pater Pluton ... monstrum . Jump up ^ Foley , Hymn to Demeter , p. 110 . Jump up ^ Justin Martyr , Apology 2.5 ; see discussion of the context by David Dawson , Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria ( University of California Press , 1992 ) , pp. 193 -- 194 . Jump up ^ Hesychius , lexicon entry on Ἰσοδαίτης ( Isodaitês ) , 778 in the 1867 edition of Schmidt . Jump up ^ David Scott Wilson - Okamura , Virgil in the Renaissance ( Cambridge University Press , 2010 ) , p. 169 , citing Boccaccio , Genealogia deorum gentilium 8.6 ; see also the Italian translation of 1644 , p. 130 . Boccaccio cites Servius as his source , adding that Theodontius names the daughter of Pluto as Reverentia and says she was married to Honos ( `` Honor '' ) . Makaria , `` Blessedness , '' was a daughter of Hades , according to the Suda . Jump up ^ `` Of griesly Pluto she the daughter was '' : Edmund Spenser , The Faerie Queene , I. iv. 11.1 , as noted by G.W. Kitchin , Book I of The Faery Queene ( Oxford : Clarendon Press , 1879 , 9th ed . ) , p. 180 . In the 15th - century allegory The Assembly of Gods ( lines 601 -- 602 ) , the figure of Vice personified is the bastard son of Pluto . Jump up ^ A.C. Hamilton , The Spenser Encyclopedia ( University of Toronto Press , 1990 , 1997 ) , p. 351 , noting that Hecate is called a `` phosphor '' , bringer of light , by Euripides , Helen 569 . The title Phosphoros is a common one for Hecate ; Sarah Iles Johnston , Restless Dead : Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece ( University of California Press , 1999 ) , p. 206 . Jump up ^ Douglas Brooks - Davies , entry on `` Mysteries '' in The Spenser Encyclopedia , pp. 486 -- 487 . Jump up ^ Claude Calame , `` The Authority of Orpheus , Poet and Bard : Between Tradition and Written Practice , '' in Allusion , Authority , and Truth : Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis ( De Gruyter , 2010 ) , p. 16 . Jump up ^ As accurately reflected by the translation of Michael Simpson , Gods and Heroes of the Greeks : The Library of Apollodorus ( University of Massachusetts Press , 1976 ) , pp. 13 -- 15 . Apollodorus consistently names the ruler of the underworld Plouton throughout , including the myths of his birth , tripartite division of sovereignty over the world , and the abduction . Jump up ^ Geoffrey Miles , Classical Mythology in English Literature : A Critical Anthology ( Routledge , 1999 ) , p. 54ff . Jump up ^ Horace , Carmen 2.14. 6 -- 7 , inlacrimabilem Plutona ( Greek accusative instead of Latin Plutonem ) . Jump up ^ A.S.P. Woodhouse et al. , A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton ( Columbia University Press , 1972 ) , p. 327 . Jump up ^ In the dialogue Amatorius ( Ἐρωτικός ) 20 , Plutarch says that the only god Hades listens to is Eros ; the 17th - century classicist Daniel Clasen , translating the Moralia into Latin , gives the god 's name as Pluto , and in his mythographical work Theologia gentilis 2.4. 6 includes this quality in his chapter on Pluto ; see Thesaurus graecarum antiquitatum ( Leiden , 1699 ) , vol. 7 , 104 . Jump up ^ Lucian , Dialogues of the Dead 23 ( English translation from the 1820 edition of William Tooke ; Jan Kott , The Eating of the Gods ( Northwestern University Press , 1987 ) , pp. 95 -- 97 . Lucian 's dialogue has sometimes been referenced as a model for the premature loss of love between an active man carried suddenly into death and his young wife ; see for instance Alfred Woltmann , Holbein and His Times ( London , 1872 ) , p. 280 , and A.P. Russell , In a Club Corner : The Monologue of a Man Who Might Have Been Sociable ( Houghton , Mifflin , 1890 ) , pp. 78 -- 79 . The dialogue has also been seen as a burlesque of domesticity ; Betrand A. Goldgar , Henry Fielding : Miscellanies ( Wesleyan University Press , 1993 ) , vol. 2 , p. xxxviii . Jump up ^ Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow , p. 102 . The shift may have begun as early as the 6th century . The earliest evidence of the assimilation of Hades and Ploutos / Plouton is a phiale by the Douris painter , dating to ca . 490 BC , according to Jan N. Bremmer , `` W. Brede Kristensen and the Religions of Greece and Rome , '' in Man , Meaning , and Mystery : Hundred Years of History of Religions in Norway . The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen ( Brill , 2000 ) , pp. 125 -- 126 . A point of varying emphasis is whether the idea of Plouton as a god of wealth was a later development , or an inherent part of his nature , owing to the underground storage of grain in the pithoi that were also used for burial . For a summary of these issues , see Cora Angier Sowa , Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns ( Bolchazy - Carducci , 1984 , 2005 ) , p. 356 , note 105 . Jump up ^ Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City , p. 452 ; Long , The Twelve Gods , p. 154 . ^ Jump up to : Farnell , The Cults of the Greek States , p. 281 . Jump up ^ Long , The Twelve Gods , p. 179 . See lectisternium for the `` strewing of couches '' in ancient Rome . Two inscriptions from Attica record the names of individuals who participated in the ritual at different times : IG II 1933 and 1934 , as cited by Robert Develin , Athenian Officials , 684 -- 321 B.C. ( Cambridge University Press , 1989 , 2003 ) , p. 417 . Jump up ^ Nicholas F. Jones , The Associations of Classical Athens : The Response to Democracy ( Oxford University Press , 1999 ) , p. 125 , citing IG II 1363 , dating ca . 330 -- 270 ; Karl Kerényi , Eleusis : Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter ( Princeton University Press , 1967 ) , pp. 110 -- 111 . Jump up ^ Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow , pp. 101 -- 102 . Jump up ^ Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston , Ritual Texts and the Afterlife ( Routledge , 2007 ) , first page ( not numbered ) . Jump up ^ The recurring phrase `` house of Hades '' (  ̔ Αΐδαο δόμος ) can be read ambiguously as either the divine being or the place , or both . In the numbering of Graf and Johnston , Ritual Texts and the Afterlife , `` house of Hades '' appears in Tablet 1 , line 2 ( Hipponion , Calabria , Magna Graecia , ca . 400 BC ) , which refers again to Hades as a place ( `` what you are seeking in the darkness of murky Hades '' , line 9 ) , with the king of the underworld ( ὑποχθονίοι βασιλεϊ , hypochthonioi basilei ) alluded to in line 13 ; Tablet 2 , line 1 ( Petelia , present - day Strongoli , Magna Graecia , 4th century BC ) ; and Tablet 25 ( Pharsalos , Thessaly , 350 -- 300 BC ) . Hades is also discernible on the `` carelessly inscribed '' Tablet 38 from a Hellenistic - era grave in Hagios Athanasios , near Thessalonike . Jump up ^ Kevin Clinton , Myth and Cult : The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries ( Stockholm , 1992 ) , p. 111 , observing that this presentation in art contrasts with the earliest literary sources . Jump up ^ Giovanni Casadio and Patricia A. Johnston , `` Introduction '' , Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia ( University of Texas Press , 2009 ) , p. 21 . Jump up ^ Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow , p. 101 . Jump up ^ Tablets 15 ( Eleuthera 6 , 2nd / 1st century BC ) and 17 ( Rethymnon 1 , from the early Roman Empire , 25 -- 40 AD ) , from Crete , in the numbering of Graf and Johnston . Jump up ^ Sometimes read as `` father , '' as in the translation given by Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld : The Orphic Gold Tablets ( Brill , 2008 ) , p. 84 . Jump up ^ Παρὰ Φερσεφόνει Πλούτωνί τε : Tsagalis , Inscribing Sorrow , pp. 100 -- 101 . Tsagalis discusses this inscription in light of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Thesmophoria . Jump up ^ The entry in Hesychius reads : Εὐβουλεύς ( sch . Nic . Al . 14 ) ὁ Πλούτων . παρὰ δὲ τοῖς πολλοῖς ὁ Ζεὺς ἐν Κυρήνη ( Eubouleus : ho Ploutôn . para de toîs polloîs ho Zeus en Kyrene ) , 643 ( Schmidt ) . Jump up ^ Kevin Clinton , `` The Mysteries of Demeter and Kore , '' in A Companion to Greek Religion ( Wiley - Blackwell , 2010 ) , pp. 347 -- 353 . Jump up ^ Lewis Richard Farnell , The Cults of the Greek States , vol. 3 , p. 145 . Jump up ^ Euboulos may be a cult title here and not the name of the god Eubuleus ; elsewhere it is an epithet of the sea god Nereus , perfect in his knowledge of truth and justice , and in his own Orphic hymn the guardian of the `` roots '' of the sea . See Pindar , Pythian Ode 3.93 ; Hesiod , Theogony 233 -- 236 ; Orphic Hymn 23 ; Athanassakis , Hesiod , p. 52 ; Pierre Bonnechere , `` Trophonius of Lebadea : Mystery Aspects of an Oracular Cult in Boeotia , '' in Greek Mysteries : The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults ( Routledge , 2003 , 2005 ) , p. 188 . Jump up ^ The translations of the Orphic Hymn to Pluto are from Apostolos N. Athanassakis , The Orphic Hymns ( Scholars Press , 1977 ) . Jump up ^ Act of Thomas 50 , as cited and discussed by Susan E. Myers , Spirit Epicleses in the Acts of Thomas ( Mohr Siebeck , 2010 ) , p. 174 . Jump up ^ Hans Dieter Betz , The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation ( University of Chicago Press , 1986 , 1992 ) , passim ; John G. Gager , Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World ( Oxford University Press , 1992 ) , p. 12 ( examples invoking Pluto pp. 99 , 135 , 143 -- 144 , 207 -- 209 ) and passim on Hades . Jump up ^ Bolt , Jesus ' Defeat of Death , p. 152 ; John Scheid , `` Sacrifices for Gods and Ancestors '' , in A Companion to Roman Religion ( Blackwell , 2007 ) , p. 264 . Jump up ^ Daniel Ogden , Magic , Witchcraft , and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds ( Oxford University Press , 2002 ) , p. 212 , with English translation of the curse . Jump up ^ Gager , Curse Tablets , p. 131 , with translations of both tablets , and note 35 . Jump up ^ Derek Collins , Magic in the Ancient Greek World ( Blackwell , 2008 ) , p. 73 . Jump up ^ Esther Eidinow , `` Why the Athenians Began to Curse , '' in Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution : Art , Literature , Philosophy and Politics 430 -- 380 BC ( Cambridge University Press , 2007 ) , p. 50 ; Ogden , Magic , Withcraft , and Ghosts , p. 212 . Jump up ^ Bernard Dietrich , `` The Religious Prehistory of Demeter 's Eleusinian Mysteries , '' in La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell ' Impero Romano ( Brill , 1982 ) , p. 454 . Jump up ^ Robertson , Religion and Reconciliation , p. 163 online , citing IG 1 356.155 and IG 2 1672.140 ; see also The Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore : Topography and Architecture ( American School of Classical Studies , 1997 ) , p. 76 , note 31 . Jump up ^ Strabo 14.1. 44 ; `` Summaries of Periodicals , '' American Journal of Archaeology 7 ( 1891 ) , p. 209 ; Hewitt , `` The Propitiation of Zeus , '' p. 93 . Jump up ^ Frederick E. Brenk , `` Jerusalem - Hierapolis . The Revolt under Antiochos IV Epiphanes in the Light of Evidence for Hierapolis of Phrygia , Babylon , and Other Cities , '' in Relighting the Souls : Studies in Plutarch , in Greek Literature , Religion , and Philosophy , and in the New Testament Background ( Franz Steiner , 1998 ) , pp. 382 -- 384 , citing Photius , Life of Isidoros 131 on the dream . Jump up ^ Christiane Sourvinou - Inwood , `` Reconstructing Change : Ideology and the Eleusinian Mysteries , '' in Inventing Ancient Culture : Historicism , Periodization and the Ancient World ( Routledge , 1997 ) , p. 137 ; Georg Luck , Arcana Mundi : Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds ( Johns Hopkins University Press , 1985 , 2006 , 2nd ed . ) , p. 505 . Jump up ^ Strabo C244 -- 6 , as cited by Daniel Ogden , Magic , Witchcraft , and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds : A Sourcebook ( Oxford University Press , 2002 ) , pp. 190 -- 191 . Jump up ^ Kevin Clinton , Myth and Cult : The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries ( Stockholm , 1992 ) , pp. 105 . As Clinton notes ( p. 107 ) , the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae does not distinguish between Hades and Plouton , and combines evidence for either in a single entry . The only vase to label the Eleusinian Theos with an inscription is a red - figured footed dinos in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum , attributed to the Syleus Painter . The main scene is the departure of Triptolemos , with Demeter on the left and Persephone as Pherephata ( ( Φε ) ρ ( ε ) φάτα ) on the right . Theos wears a himation over a spangled tunic with decorated hem ( Clinton , p. 106 ) . Jump up ^ Catherine M. Keesling , `` Endoios 's Painting from the Themistoklean Wall : A Reconstruction , '' Hesperia 68.4 ( 1999 ) , p. 544 , note 160 . Jump up ^ Clare Robertson et al. , Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections ( Ashmolean Museum , 1996 ) , p. 35 . Jump up ^ Pausanias 5.20 . Jump up ^ Natale Conti , Mythologiae 2.9 , edition of 1651 , pp. 173 -- 174 . Jump up ^ Sophocles , Oedipus at Colonus 1051 ( `` Rites they to none betray , / Ere on his lips is laid / Secrecy 's golden key / By their own acolytes , / Priestly Eumolpidae , '' in the 1912 translation of F. Storr ) , as cited by Jane Ellen Harrison , introduction to Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens , a translation of Pausanias by Margaret de G. Verrall ( London , 1890 ) , pp. liv -- lv . It is unclear whether a literal key is meant , or a golden lamella ( Totenpass ) . Jump up ^ Robert Turcan , Les religions de l'Asie dans la vallée du Rhône ( Brill , 1972 ) , p. 26 . Jump up ^ Turcan , Les religions de l'Asie , pp. 23 -- 26 . Both Persephone ( as Persephassa and `` Kore out of Tartaros '' ) and Anubis are key - holders throughout the Greek Magical Papyri . Jesus Christ , as the conqueror of death and Hades , holds keys in the Book of Revelation 1 : 18 ; see Walter A. Elwell and Philip W. Comfort , Tyndale Bible Dictionary ( Tyndale , 2001 ) , p. 561 . Jump up ^ For extensive notes on Aiakos , see Radcliffe Guest Edmonds , Myths of the Underworld Journey : Plato , Aristophanes , and the ' Orphic ' Gold Tablets ( Cambridge University Press , 2004 ) , p. 148 , note 116 . As a possessor of keys , he appears in Apollodorus 3.12. 6 , PGM IV. 1264 , and inscriptions . Jump up ^ Ancient sources on phasganion , xiphion and gladiolus , generally called `` corn - flag '' by historical botanists , include Theophrastus , Historia Plantarum 7.12. 3 ; Dioscorides , De Materia Medica E 2.101 ; Pliny , Natural History 21.107 -- 115 ; Pseudo-Apuleius , Herbarius 79 , as cited by Andrew Dalby , Food in the Ancient World from A to Z ( Routledge , 2003 ) , p. 105 , characterizing Pliny 's entry on the plant as `` confused . '' The correspondence of ancient plant names to modern species is always uncertain . Both the Greek xiphion and the Latin word gladiolus ( `` little sword '' ) come from a word meaning `` sword . '' Jump up ^ Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle ( Paris , 1819 ) , pp. 315 -- 316 ; Julius Billerbeck , Flora classica ( Leipzig , 1824 ) , p. 13 ; `` L'origine dei maccheroni , '' Archivo per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari 17 ( 1898 ) , vol. 36 , p. 428 . Jump up ^ Francis Adams , The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta ( London , 1847 ) , p. 270 ; Dalby , Food in the Ancient World , p. 105 ; Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle , p. 315 . Jump up ^ John M. Riddle , Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance ( Harvard University Press , 1992 ) , p. 42 ; Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle , p. 315 . Jump up ^ P.G. Maxwell - Stuart , Studies in Greek Colour Terminology : ΓΛΑΥΚΟΣ ( Brill , 1981 ) , vol. 1 , pp. 40 , 42 , citing Cornutus , Theologiae Graecae Compendium 9 , 20 , 35 . The word γλαυκότης ( glaukotēs ) , however , is a textual crux in the passage pertaining to Pluto . Jump up ^ Lucifuga inumbratione pallescens and Tartareae noctis obscuritate furvescens , Martianus Capella , De nuptiis 1.79 -- 80 ; Danuta Shanzer , A Philosophical and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella 's De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1 ( University of California Press , 1986 ) , p. 171 . Jump up ^ Ovid , Fasti 4.446 , as cited John G. Fitch , Seneca 's Hercules furens : A Critical Text with Introduction and Commentary ( Cornell University Press , 1987 ) , p. 166 , note to Seneca 's identical description of the horses of the Sun ( line 132 ) . Ovid describes the horses as black ( ater ) in his version of the abduction myth in the Metamorphoses , 5.310 . On the color caeruleus , see also Hendrik Wagenvoort , `` Caerimonia , '' in Studies , pp. 98 -- 101 . Jump up ^ Natale Conti , Mythologiae 2.9 . Conti 's sources on this point are unclear , and he thoroughly conflates traditions pertaining to the various classical rulers of the underworld . Jump up ^ Homeric Hymn to Demeter , lines 7 -- 9 , as cited by Radford , Lost Girls , p. 145 ; Clayton Zimmerman , The Pastoral Narcissus : A Study of the First Idyll of Theocritus ( Rowman & Littlefield , 1994 ) , p. 2 . Jump up ^ Sophocles , Oedipus at Colonus 681 , and scholion , on Demeter and Persephone ( the two `` Great Goddesses '' ) ; Euphorion , fragment 94 , on the Eumenides ; Zimmerman , The Pastoral Narcissus , p. 2 ; Jan Coenradd Kamerbeek , The Plays of Sophocles , Commentaries : The Oedipus Colonus ( Brill , 1984 ) , vol. 7 , p. 106 , noting that garlands of flowers were expressly forbidden at the Thesmophoria ; James C. Hogan , A Commentary on the Plays of Sophocles ( Southern Illinois University Press , 1991 ) , p. 99 . Jump up ^ `` Death and Greek Myths , '' in Greek and Egyptian Mythologies , edited by Yves Bonnefoy ( University of Chicago Press , 1991 , 1992 ) , p. 110 . Jump up ^ Zimmerman , The Pastoral Narcissus , p. 2 ; Carlin A. Barton , The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans : The Gladiator and the Monster ( Princeton University Press , 1993 ) , p. 92 . The phallus as a magic charm was the remedy for invidia or the evil eye , a self - induced form of which was the ruin of the mythological figure Narcissus . Jump up ^ On the difficulty of identifying precisely which flower the ancients meant by `` narcissus , '' see R.C. Jebb , Sophocles : The Plays and Fragments ( Cambridge University Press , 1900 , 3rd edition ) , p. 115 . Jump up ^ Artemidorus , Oneirocritica 1.77 , as noted by Jebb , Sophocles , p. 115 . Jump up ^ Ovid , Metamorphoses 3.505 ; Zimmerman , The Pastoral Narcissus , p. 48 . The Styx here is a pool . Jump up ^ Theophrastus , Historia plantarum 7.13 -- 14 ; Nicander , Theriaca 846 ; Rabelais , Gargantua and Pantagruel 4.24 ; Adams , The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta , pp. 22 -- 23 ; Richard Hunter , Theocritus : A Selection ( Cambridge University Press , 1999 ) , p. 277 , noting that `` the association of lush vegetation ... with female ' otherness ' and sexuality has a long history . '' Jump up ^ Riddle , Contraception and Abortion , pp. 31 , 82 , 180 ( note 5 ) . Jump up ^ Samuel Beckett , `` Jusque dans la caverne ciel et sol '' , the last of twelve poems in the cycle Poèmes 38 -- 39 ( 1946 ) ; C.J. Ackerley and S.E. Gontarski , The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett ( Grove Press , 2004 ) , pp. 293 , 443 , 599 . Jump up ^ Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , p. 25 . Jump up ^ Servius , note to Aeneid 3.680 . Jump up ^ Isidore of Seville , Etymologiae 17.7. 34 . Jump up ^ Ovid , Metamorphoses 10.106 ff. ; Servius , note to Vergil 's Georgics 1.20 . Jump up ^ Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , pp. 25 -- 28 . Jump up ^ The nymph Minthē , a rival for the attentions of Hades ( not named as Pluto ) , was transformed by Persephone into the mint plant , a major ingredient in the ritual drink of the mysteries ( Strabo 8.3. 14 ) . Jump up ^ Servius , note to Vergil 's Eclogue 7.61 . Persephone is not mentioned . Jump up ^ Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , pp. 93 and 124 -- 125 , citing Harpocration . Jump up ^ Arthur Calvert , P. Vergili Maronis . Aeneidos Liber V ( Cambridge University Press , 1879 ) , p. 48 . This was a particular custom of the Rhodians ; the heroine Polyxo awarded white poplar wreaths to child athletes at the games she presented in honor of her husband ; Pierre Grimal , The Dictionary of Classical Mythology ( Blackwell , 1986 , 1996 ) , p. 385 . Jump up ^ Riddle , Contraception and Abortion , p. 33 . Jump up ^ Arthur Bernard Cook , Zeus : A Study in Ancient Religion ( Cambridge University Press , 1925 ) , pp. 420 -- 422 ; Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , pp. 25 -- 26 ; W.K.C. Guthrie , Orpheus and Greek Religion ( Princeton University Press , 1952 , 1993 ) , p. 182 . Jump up ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus , Bibliotheca 1.1 -- 2 , 1911 Loeb Classical Library edition , translation and notes by J.G. Frazer . Jump up ^ Hansen , Classical Mythology , p. 182 . Apparent references to the `` helmet of Pluto '' in other authors , such as Irenaeus ( Against Heresies ) , are misleading ; `` Pluto '' is substituted by the English translator for `` Hades . '' Jump up ^ Rabelais , Gargantua and Pantagruel Book 5 , Chapter 8 . Jump up ^ Erasmus , Adagia 2.10. 74 ( Orci galea ) . Jump up ^ Francis Bacon , Essays Civil and Moral 21 , `` Of Delays . '' Jump up ^ A.L. Millin , `` Mythologie , '' in Magasin Encyclopédique ( Paris , 1808 ) , p. 283 ; G.T. Villenave , Les métamorphoses d'Ovide ( Paris , 1806 ) , p. 307 ; Arthur Bernard Cook , Zeus : A Study in Ancient Religion ( Oxford University Press , 1924 ) , vol. 2 , p. 798 ff. ; John G. Fitch , Seneca 's Hercules Furens : A Critical Text With Introduction and Commentary ( Cornell University Press , 1987 ) , p . Jump up ^ Cook , Zeus , vol. 2 , p. 801 . Jump up ^ Inferni Iovis ( genitive case ) , Hercules Furens line 47 , in the prologue spoken by Juno . Jump up ^ Diro Iovi , line 608 of Hercules Furens ; compare Vergil , Aeneid 4.638 , Iove Stygio , the `` Jove of the Styx '' . Fitch , Seneca 's Hercules Furens , p. 156 . Jump up ^ Codex Augustanus , note to Euripides ' Phoenician Women , line 188 , as cited by Cook , Zeus , vol. 2 , p. 806 , note 6 . Jump up ^ Cook , Zeus , vol. 2 , p. 803 . Jump up ^ Friedrich Solmsen , `` The Powers of Darkness in Prudentius ' Contra Symmachum : A Study of His Poetic Imagination , '' Vigiliae Christianae 19.4 ( 1965 ) , pp. 238 , 240 -- 248 et passim . Jump up ^ Richard Stemp , The Secret Language of the Renaissance : Decoding the Hidden Symbolism of Italian Art ( Duncan Baird , 2006 ) , p. 114 ; Clare Robertson et al. , Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections ( Ashmolean Museum , 1996 ) , p. 78 . Jump up ^ Robertson et al. , Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections , pp. 78 -- 79 . ^ Jump up to : Creighton Gilbert , Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals ( Penn State University Press , 1995 ) , pp. 124 -- 125 . Jump up ^ Identified as Pluto by Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , p. 275 . Jump up ^ Identified as Hades by Hansen , Classical Mythology , p. 181 . Jump up ^ A.M. Bowie , Aristophanes : Myth , Ritual and Comedy ( Cambridge University Press , 1993 , 1996 ) , p. 229 . Jump up ^ As summarized by Benjamin Bickley Rogers , The Comedies of Aristophanes ( London , 1902 ) , pp. xvii and 214 ( note to line 1414 ) . Jump up ^ Bowie , Aristophanes , pp. 231 -- 233 , 269 -- 271 . Jump up ^ Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal , Instructions for the Netherworld , pp. 127 -- 128 . Jump up ^ Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City , pp. 452 -- 453 . Jump up ^ Translation by Benjamin Jowett , The Dialogues of Plato ( London , 1873 ) , vol. 1 . Jump up ^ Plato , Laws 828d , translation from Long , The Twelve Gods , p. 69 . Jump up ^ Walter Burkert , Greek Religion ( Harvard University Press , 1985 , originally published 1977 in German ) , pp. 231 , 336 . See also Homo Necans ( University of California Press , 1983 , originally published 1972 in German ) , p. 143 . Jump up ^ Hesychius , entry on Ἰσοδαίτης , 778 in the 1867 edition of Schmidt , as translated and discussed by Richard Seaford , Money and the Early Greek Mind : Homer , Philosophy , Tragedy ( Cambridge University Press , 2004 ) , p. 51 . Hesychius notes that Isodaites may alternatively refer to a son of Pluto as well as Pluto himself . Jump up ^ H.S. Versnel , Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion : Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual ( Brill , 1993 , 1994 ) , p. 119 , especially note 93 . Jump up ^ Plato , Laws 828 B-D ; Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City p. 452 ; Long , The Twelve Gods , p. 179 . Jump up ^ Morrow , Plato 's Cretan City , p. 453 ; Long , The Twelve Gods , p. 179 . Jump up ^ Lactantius , Divine Institutes 1.14 ; Brian P. Copenhaver , Polydore Vergil : On Discovery ( Harvard University Press , 2002 ) , p. 564 . Jump up ^ This parenthetical remark is part of the original text . Several manuscripts of Lactantius read Diespiter , which is usually a title of Jupiter , but Dis pater is regarded as the more likely reading . See Katherine Nell MacFarlane , `` Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods ( Origines VIII. 11 ) , '' Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 70 ( 1980 ) , p. 20 , citing Migne , Patrologia Latina vol . VI , col. 190 . The relation of the title Dis Pater to Diespiter in Latin is debated . Jump up ^ `` Titan '' usually refers to a class or race of deities , but sometimes means Helios or other divine personifications of the Sun . Jump up ^ Cicero , De natura deorum 3.58 : `` Likewise , there are multiple Dianas . The first is said to have been born as a winged Cupid , with Jove and Proserpina ( as parents ) . The second , whom we regard as the daughter of the third Jove and Latona , is better known . A tradition holds that Upis is the father and Glauca the mother of the third ( Diana ) '' ( Dianae item plures : prima Iovis et Proserpinae , quae pinnatum Cupidinem genuisse dicitur ; secunda notior , quam Iove tertio et Latona natam accepimus ; tertiae pater Upis traditur , Glauce mater : eam saepe Graeci Upim paterno nomine appellant ) ; Copenhaver , Polydore Vergil : On Discovery , p. 564 . Jump up ^ Boccaccio 's Expositions on Dante 's Comedy , translated by Michael Papio ( University of Toronto Press , 2009 ) , pp. 332 -- 333 , 355 . Jump up ^ Rieuwerd Buitenwerf , Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting ( Brill , 2003 ) , p. 157 . Jump up ^ Gábor Betegh , The Derveni Papyrus : Cosmology , Theology and Interpretations ( Cambridge University Press , 2004 ) , p. 151 , has noted that `` one can not establish a linear descent between the different versions '' ; though efforts to do so have been made , `` we can not find a single mytheme which would occur invariably in all the accounts and could thus create the core of all Orphic theogonies . '' Jump up ^ J. van Amersfoort , `` Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Theogony in the Pseudo-Clementines , '' in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions , Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday ( Brill , 1981 ) , p. 13 . Jump up ^ Van Amersfoort , `` Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Theogony , '' pp. 16 -- 17 . Jump up ^ Van Amersfoort , `` Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Theogony , '' pp. 17 -- 18 . Betegh , The Derveni Papyrus , p. 151 , summarizes this version as follows : `` The story starts with Chaos ; then comes the egg ; the bottom part of the egg submerges and becomes Pluton , and Kronos -- not a separate god but identified with Chronos -- swallows this heavy matter . The middle part , covering the first sediment , becomes Poseidon . The upper part of the egg , being purer and lighter , fiery in nature , goes upward and is called Zeus , and so forth . '' Jump up ^ Van Amersfoort , `` Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Theogony , '' p. 23 ; Betegh , The Derveni Papyrus , p. 150 . Jump up ^ Arthur Bernard Cook , Zeus : A Study in Ancient Religion ( Cambridge University Press , 1925 ) , p. 746 . Jump up ^ Cornutus 5 ; Varro , De lingua latina 5.66 ( on Dis ) ; Seneca , Consolatio ad Marciam 25 ; all as cited by Joseph B. Mayor , De natura deorum libri tres ( Cambridge University Press , 1883 ) , vol. 2 , p. 175 , note to 2.26. 66 . Jump up ^ R.M. van den Berg , Proclus ' Commentary on the Cratylus in Context : Ancient Theories of Language and Naming ( Brill , 2008 ) , pp. 34 -- 35 . Jump up ^ David Dawson , Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria ( University of California Press , 1992 ) , p. 33 , citing Epidrome 5.5. 7 -- 9 . Jump up ^ Plutarch , The Face of the Moon , LacusCurtius edition of the Loeb Classical Library translation online , as discussed by Leonard L. Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 : Gods and the One God , '' in Reading Religions in the Ancient World : Essays Presented to Robert McQueen Grant on His 90th Birthday ( Brill , 2007 ) , p. 113 , with reference also to Iamblichus . See also Van den Berg , Proclus ' Commentary , p. 49 , with reference to Plutarch , On the E at Delphi . Jump up ^ This interpretation is attributed to the Greek Neoplatonist Numenius ( 2nd century AD ) , by the French scholastic William of Conches , as cited and translated by Peter Dronke , Fabula : Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism ( Brill , 1985 ) , p. 54 . Jump up ^ Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 , '' p. 101ff . The other deities are Helios Apollon , who is paired with Artemis ( p. 106 ) ; Zeus , who is subordinated to `` God Himself '' ; and Mēn , an Anatolian moon deity sometimes identified with Attis , who had a table before him for ceremonial dining ( pp. 106 , 109 ) . Jump up ^ Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 , '' pp. 104 -- 105 . Jump up ^ Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 , '' p. 111 . Jump up ^ Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 , '' pp. 110 -- 111 , 114 , with reference to the teachings of Ammonius as recorded by Plutarch , The E at Delphi . The relevant passage ( 21 ) is : `` This appears from the names , in themselves opposite and contradictory . He is called Apollo , another is called Pluto ; he is Delius ( apparent ) , the other Aidoneus ( invisible ) ; he is Phoebus ( bright ) , the other Skotios ( full of darkness ) ; by his side are the Muses , and Memory , with the other are Oblivion and Silence ; he is Theorius and Phanæus , the other is ' King of dim Night and ineffectual Sleep ' . '' See also Frederick E. Brenk , `` Plutarch 's Middle Platonic God , '' Gott und die Götter bei Plutarch ( Walter de Gruyter , 2005 ) , pp. 37 -- 43 , on Plutarch 's etymological plays that produce these antitheses . Jump up ^ Thompson , `` ISmyrna 753 , '' passim , conclusion presented on p. 119 . Thompson bases his argument on the particular collocation of deities at the sanctuary , and explicating theological details in the inscription through comparative material . See also Neoplatonism and Gnosticism . Jump up ^ In the Latin dialogue Asclepius sometimes attributed to Apuleius ; see B.L. Hijmans , `` Apuleius , Philosophus Platonicus , '' Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 36.1 ( 1987 ) , p. 441 , et passim on the question of authorship . Jump up ^ Baal - Hammon Terrae vero et mari dominatur Iupiter Plutonius , et hic nutritor est animantium mortalium et fructiferarum ( Asclepius 27 ) , noted by G.F. Hildebrand , L. Apuleii Opera Omnia ( Leipzig , 1842 ) , p. 314 , as equivalent to the Pluto described by Valerius Flaccus , Argonautica 1.780 , where , however , the god is called Dis and not Pluto . Translation from Brian P. Copenhaver , Hermetica : The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius ( Cambridge University Press , 1992 , 2002 ) , p. 83 ; see also note to the passage p. 245 . Influence from Roman Africa , particularly the figure of Baal - Hammon , may explain this particular syncretism ; Jean - Pierre Mahé , Le fragment du `` Discours parfait '' dans la Bibliothèque de Nag Hammadi , Colloque International sur les textes de Nag hammadi ( Québec , 22 -- 25 août 1978 ) ( Éditions Peeters , 1981 ) , p. 310 . Jump up ^ Pseudo-Callisthenes , I. 30 -- 33 , as cited by Jarl Fossum , `` The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth : Critical Notes on G.W. Bowersock , Hellenism in Late Antiquity , '' Vigiliae Christianae 53.3 ( 1999 ) , p. 309 , note 15 . On the oracle and for the passage in which Aion Plutonius is named , see Irad Malkin , Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece ( Brill , 1987 ) , p. 107 , especially note 87 . Jump up ^ `` On this day and at this hour the Virgin gave birth to Aion '' : Gilles Quispel , `` Hermann Hesse and Gnosis , '' in Gnostica , Judaica , Catholica : Collected Essays ( Brill , 2008 ) , p. 258 , noting that this date coincided with Epiphany and was a new year 's celebration . Jump up ^ As at Horace , Carmen 1.4. 17 , where the domus ... Plutonia renders in Latin the Greek phrase `` house of Hades . '' Jump up ^ Entry on `` Demiurge , '' The Classical Tradition ( Harvard University Press , 2010 ) , p. 256 . Jump up ^ Entry on `` Orpheus , '' The Classical Tradition , p. 665 . It was even said that the soul of Orpheus had been reborn into Ficino . Jump up ^ Entry on `` Demiurge , '' in The Classical Tradition p. 256 . Jump up ^ Friedrich Solmsen , `` The Powers of Darkness in Prudentius ' Contra Symmachum : A Study of His Poetic Imagination , '' Vigiliae Christianae 19 ( 1965 ) 237 -- 257 ; Margaret English Frazer , `` Hades Stabbed by the Cross of Christ , '' Metropolitan Museum Journal 9 ( 1974 ) 153 -- 161 . Jump up ^ K.M. Coleman , `` Fatal Charades : Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments , '' Journal of Roman Studies 80 ( 1990 ) , p. 67 . Jump up ^ Tertullian , Ad nationes 1.10 . Augustine regularly calls the Roman ruler of the underworld Pluto in De civitate Dei ; see 2.15 , where Pluto and Neptune are described as the brothers of Jove ; 4.10 , in noting their three - way division of sovereignty over the earth and with Proserpina as Pluto 's spouse ( coniunx ) ; 4.11 , in deriding the allegorizing of divinity in physical cosmogony ; and 6.7 , in denouncing the mysteries ( sacra ) as obscene . Jump up ^ Daniel P. Harmon , `` The Religious Significance of Games in the Roman Age , '' in The Archaeology of the Olympics : The Olympics and Other Festivals in Antiquity ( University of Wisconsin Press , 1988 ) , p. 242 ; Paul - Marie Duval , `` Sucellus , the God with a Hammer , '' in American , African , and Old European Mythologies ( University of Chicago Press , 1993 ) , p. 222 . Jump up ^ Prudentius , Contra Symmachum 1.379 -- 398 ; Donald G. Kyle , Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome ( Routledge , 1998 , 2001 ) , p. 59 . Jump up ^ Solmsen , `` The Powers of Darkness , '' pp. 237 -- 257 ; Frazer , `` Hades Stabbed by the Cross of Christ , '' , pp. 153 -- 161 . Jump up ^ Dic igitur , praepulchra polis , quod Danea munus / Libavit tibimet soboles Plutonis amica , Bella Parisiacae urbis 1.21 , as noted by Nirmal Dass , `` Temporary Otherness and Homiletic History in the Late Carolingian Age : A Reading of the Bella Parisiacae urbis of Abbo of Stain - Germain - des - Prés , '' in Difference and Identity in Francia and Medieval France ( Ashgate Publishing , 2010 ) , p. 106 . In his earlier edition , translation , and commentary of the work , Dass gives `` Speak , most wondrous of cities , of the gift the Danes brought for you , / Those friends of Pluto '' , in Viking Attacks on Paris : The ' Bella Parisiacae Urbis ' of Abbo of Saint - Germain - des - Prés ( Peeters , 2007 ) , pp. 28 -- 29 , but soboles ( classical Latin suboles ) means `` progency , offspring , '' modified by amica , `` dear , beloved . '' Jump up ^ De deorum imaginibus libellus , chapter 6 , `` De Plutone '' : homo terribilis in solio sulphureo sedens , sceptrum regni in manu tenens dextra : sinistra , animam constringes , cui tricipitem Cerberum sub pedibus collocabant , & iuxta se tres Harpyias habebat . De throno aurê eius sulphureo quatuor flumina manabunt , quae scilicet Lethum , Cocytû , Phlegethontem , & Acherontem appellabant , & Stygem paludem iuxta flumina assignabant . Jump up ^ The questions of authorship involving the De deorum imaginibus libellus and the Liber Ymaginum deorum ( `` Book of Images of the Gods '' ) are vexed ; Ronald E. Pepin , The Vatican Mythographers ( Fordham University Press , 2008 ) , pp. 7 -- 9 . Jump up ^ Dante , Inferno , Canto VII . Jump up ^ For instance , Peter Bondanella in his note to the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Inferno : Dante Alighieri ( Barnes & Noble Classics , 2003 ) , pp. 202 -- 203 . Dante may simply be preserving the longstanding conflation of Greek Plouton and Ploutos ; see Allen Mandelbaum , note to his translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri : Inferno ( Bantam Dell , 2004 , originally published 1980 ) , p. 357 . In modern Italian , the name of the classical ruler of the underworld is Plutone . Jump up ^ The tormented souls wail `` Perché tieni ? e `` Perché burli ? '' ( `` ' Why do you hoard ? ' ' Why do you squander ? ' '' ) : Inferno , Canto VII , line 30 . Jump up ^ Il gran nemico , Inferno , Canto VI , line 115 . Jump up ^ Bondanella , The Inferno p. 206 ; Mandelbaum , Inferno p. 69 . Jump up ^ Ralph Nash , Jerusalem Delivered : An English Prose Version ( Wayne State University Press , 1987 ) , pp. xi and 475 . Jump up ^ Tasso , Jerusalem Delivered , Canto 13.7 , translated by Edward Fairfax ( 1907 ) . Jump up ^ In The House of Fame ( lines 1510 -- 1511 ) , Chaucer explicitly acknowledges his debt to Claudian `` That bar up al the fame of helle , / Of Pluto , and of Proserpyne , '' as noted by Radford , The Lost Girls , p. 25 . Jump up ^ In Troilus and Criseyde ( lines 590 -- 503 ) , as noted by Rosalyn Rossignol , Critical Companion to Chaucer : A Literary Reference to His Life and Work ( Facts on File , 2006 ) , p. 540 . Jump up ^ Chaucer , `` The Knight 's Tale '' 2082 and 2299 . Jump up ^ Rossignol , Critical Companion pp. 432 , 540 . Jump up ^ John M. Fyler , `` Pagan Survivals , '' in A Companion to Chaucer ( Blackwell , 2000 , 2002 ) , p. 351 . Jump up ^ Seth Lerer , `` The Canterbury Tales , '' in The Yale Companion to Chaucer ( Yale University Press , 2006 ) , p. 270 . Pluto and Proserpina in The Merchant 's Tale have been seen as Shakespeare 's model for Titania and Oberon in A Midsummer Night 's Dream , a view at least as old as Chaucer 's editor Thomas Tyrwhitt ( see 1798 edition ) and reiterated by Walter William Skeat in his edition of The Canterbury Tales ( 1894 edition ) . Jump up ^ William Dunbar , The Goldyn Targe ( 1503 ) , lines 126 -- 7 , as cited by Ian Simpson Ross , William Dunbar ( Brill , 1981 ) , p. 252 . Compare also Arthur Golding 's `` elves of hell '' to translate Ovid 's Avernales ... nymphas , `` nymphs of Avernus '' ( Metamorphoses 5.670 , in his account of the abduction ) . Jump up ^ Shakespeare 's references to Pluto are conventional . Pluto is associated with Hell in the `` Roman '' plays Coriolanus ( I. iv , `` Pluto and Hell ! '' as an exclamation ) and Titus Andronicus ( IV. iii , `` Pluto 's region , '' and `` Pluto sends you word , / If you will have Revenge from hell , you shall '' ) , as also in Henry IV , Part 2 ( II. iv ) : `` I 'll see her damn 'd first ; -- to Pluto 's damned lake , by this hand , to th ' infernal deep , with Erebus and tortures vile also . '' Pluto 's gates are a metaphor for strength in Troilus and Cressida ( V. ii ) , where Pluto is also sworn by ( III. iv and V. ii ) . The performance of Orpheus is referenced in The Rape of Lucrece ( line 553 ) : `` And moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays . '' Shakespeare also uses the name of Roman Dis , as in Perdita 's catalogue of flowers in A Winter 's Tale ( IV. iii ) : `` O Proserpina , / For the flowers now , that , frighted , thou lett'st fall / From Dis 's waggon ! '' Jump up ^ In Doctor Faustus ( III. ii , 1616 quarto ) , Mephistopheles invokes `` Pluto 's blue fire '' in casting a spell of invisibility on the protagonist . In his translation of Lucan 's epic , Marlowe uses Pluto for Dis ( First Book of Lucan , lines 449 , where `` Pluto '' refers to the druidic god Julius Caesar identified with Dis , and 576 ) , but uses both names in the mythological narrative Hero and Leander . Jump up ^ Spenser plays on the conflation of Pluto and Plutus : `` but a little stride ... did the house of Richesse from hell - mouth divide '' and `` Here Sleep , there Richesse , and Hel-gate them both betwext '' ( 24.5 ) , as noted by Thomas E. Maresca , entry on `` Hell '' , The Spencer Encyclopedia , p. 352 . See Offspring of Pluto ( above ) on the daughter Spenser invents for Pluto . His favored epithet for Pluto is griesly , an archaism for `` grisly '' ( FG I. iv. 11.1 , II. vii. 24.1 , IV. iii. 13.2 , VI. xii. 35.6 , applied to Proserpina at I.i. 37.4 ; Pluto named also at FG I.v. 14.8 , II. viii. 24.1 , VI. xii. 35.6 , VII. vii. 5.9 , and The Shepheardes Calender `` October '' 29 ) . Jump up ^ Robert DeMaria Jr. and Robert D. Brown , Classical Literature and Its Reception : An Anthology ( Blackwell , 2007 ) , p. 453 . Both Dis and Pluto appear in the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe , but Pluto with greater frequency ; Spenser prefers the name Pluto . Jump up ^ Arthur Golding , Ovid 's Metamorphoses ( Johns Hopkins University Press , 2001 ) passim , with a few instances of Dis ; Radford , The Lost Girls , p. 25 . Jump up ^ For instance , at Paradise Lost 4.270 , as cited by Radford , The Lost Girls , p. 25 , where Proserpine is described as a flower fairer than those she was gathering and `` by gloomy Dis / was gathered . '' Jump up ^ Ovid 's Metamorphosis Translated by Arthur Golding , edited by Madeleine Forey , ( Johns Hopkins University Press , 2001 ) , p. 164 . Pluto rules over Hell throughout Spenser 's Faerie Queene , as noted by Maresca , The Spenser Encyclopedia , p. 352 . Jump up ^ John Block Friedman , Orpheus in the Middle Ages ( Syracuse University Press , 2000 ) , p. 238 ; Li Tournoiemenz Anticrit ( Le tornoiement de l'Antéchrist ) text . Jump up ^ Theresa Lynn Tinkle , Medieval Venuses and Cupids : Sexuality , Hermeneutics , and English Poetry ( Stanford University Press , 1996 ) , p. 132 . Jump up ^ The Assembly of Gods , lines 82 , 51 , 311 , 314 , in the edition of Oscar Lovell Triggs ( London , 1896 ) . Jump up ^ Entry on `` Popular Culture , '' The Classical Tradition , p. 766 . Jump up ^ Sheila Lindenbaum , `` Ceremony and Oligarchy : The London Midsummer Watch , '' in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe , ( University of Minnesota Press , 1994 ) , p. 171 ; Maria Hayward , Rich Apparel : Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII 's England ( Ashgate , 2009 ) , p. 290 . The court of Pluto continued to inspire public pageantry into the late 19th century , when floats such as the `` blazing ' Palace of Pluto ' '' were part of the Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans ; Henri Schindler , Mardi Gras Treasures : Costume Designs of the Golden Age ( Pelican , 2002 ) , p. 15 . Jump up ^ Nino Pirrotta , Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi ( Cambridge University Press , 1992 , originally published in Italian 1969 ) , passim , especially p. ix . Jump up ^ Pirrotta , Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi , with Leonardo 's drawing ( n.p. ) ; Carlo Pedretti , Leonardo : The Machines ( Giunti , 1999 ) , p. 72 . Jump up ^ Mark Ringer , Opera 's First Master : The Musical Dramas of Claudio Monteverdi ( Amadeus Press , 2006 ) , pp. 34 , 75 , 103 -- 104 ; Tim Carter , Monteverdi 's Musical Theatre ( Yale University Press , 2002 ) , p. 95 ; Enid Welsford , The Court Masque ( Cambridge University Press , 1927 ) , pp. 112 -- 113 . Jump up ^ Tim Carter , Monteverdi 's Musical Theatre p. 81 , quoting Follino , Compendio delle sontuose feste ( 1608 ) , and p. 152 . Jump up ^ George J. Buelow , A History of Baroque Music ( Indiana University Press , 2004 ) , p. 37 . Jump up ^ Kristiaan Aercke , Gods of Play : Baroque Festive Performances as Rhetorical Discourse ( SUNY Press , 1994 ) , p. 230 . Jump up ^ Piero Gelli and Filippo Poletti , Dizionario dell'opera 2008 ( Baldini Castoldi Dalai , 2005 , 2007 ) , p. 36 . Jump up ^ Charpentier 's Pluto is a bass - baritone . Jump up ^ Gelli and Poletti , Dizionario dell'opera 2008 , p. 625 . Jump up ^ James R. Anthony , French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau ( Amadeus Press , 1997 ) , p. 115 . Jump up ^ Pluto does not have a singing role in Gluck 's Orfeo ed Euridice ( 1762 ) . Jump up ^ Aercke , Gods of Play , p. 250 ; Ringer , Opera 's First Master , p. 71 . Jump up ^ Andrew Trout , City on the Seine : Paris in the Time of Richelieu and Louis XIV ( St. Martin 's Press , 1996 ) , pp. 189 -- 190 ; Buelow , A History of Baroque Music , p. 160 . Jump up ^ Daniel Heartz , Music in European Capitals : The Galant Style , 1720 -- 1780 ( W.W. Norton , 2003 ) , pp. 488 -- 492 . Jump up ^ Sasha Anawalt , The Joffrey Ballet : Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company ( University of Chicago Press , 1996 ) , p. 66 . Jump up ^ Frederick Kiefer , Shakespeare 's Visual Theatre : Staging the Personified Characters ( Cambridge University Press , 2003 ) , pp. 60 -- 61 . Jump up ^ Amy Golahney , `` Rembrandt 's Abduction of Proserpina , '' in The Age of Rembrandt : Studies in Seventeenth - Century Dutch Painting ( Penn State University Press , 1988 ) , p. 30 ; Eric Jan Sluijter , Rembrandt and the Female Nude ( Amsterdam University Press , 2006 ) , pp. 109 -- 111 . Jump up ^ Mary Margaret Heaton , The History of the Life of Albrecht Dürer of Nürnberg ( London , 1870 ) , p. 187 ; Walter L. Strauss , The Complete Engravings , Etchings , and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer ( Dover , 1973 ) , p. 178 . Jump up ^ Strauss , The Complete Engravings , p. 178 . Jump up ^ Entry on `` Orpheus , '' The Classical Tradition p. 665 . Jump up ^ Entry on `` Sculpture , '' The Classical Tradition , p. 870 . Jump up ^ Golahny , `` Rembrandt 's Abduction of Proserpina , '' p. 30ff . Jump up ^ Amy Golahny , Rembrandt 's Reading : The Artist 's Bookshelf of Ancient Poetry and History ( Amsterdam University Press , 2003 ) , pp. 102 -- 103 . Jump up ^ Radford , The Lost Girls , pp. 85 , 98 , 114 , citing Chelser , Women and Madness , pp. 240 , 266 . Jump up ^ Perhaps a play on the Italian verb chioccia used by Dante to describe Pluto 's manner of speaking in Inferno , Canto VII , line 2 . Jump up ^ Radford , The Lost Girls , pp. 247 , 252 , 254 , et passim . Jump up ^ Radford , The Lost Girls , p. 254 . Jump up ^ Rick Riordan , The Son of Neptune ( Disney - Hyperion Books , 2011 ) , p. 111 ( vol. 2 of The Heroes of Olympus series ) . 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Question: roman god of the underworld also called orcus or pluto