What important parts about Greek myths do filmmakers always seem to get wrong? Why? Hades.

Lara Vogel

·

April 20

Studied Latin and Classical Civilisation

We all know him. God of the underworld and the dead and so forth. He must be one evil guy, right? Right? Well, not really.

Hades has always had the short end of the stick. While his brothers rule over the sea and sky, Hades gets the place where all the dead people go. But he makes the most of it.

For whatever reason, he’s always portrayed in modern media as this man running on pure jealousy and hatred who’s constantly plotting to take down his brothers, mainly Zeus, so that he can become the new King of the Gods or something to that effect.

I think that this is because we tend to view death as scary and malevolent and therefore everything associated with it must also be bad.

Why wouldn’t Hades want to be king? He’s stuck underground with the souls of the dead while everyone else gets to have fun up on Mount Olympus.

Well in actual Greek mythology, Hades is a pretty chill and laidback guy. He gets along very well with his wife, few other gods can say that, has a cool pet dog, and he runs the underworld efficiently and fairly. He does his job, treats every soul who passes through the underworld in a just manner, and doesn’t spend all his time running after various nymphs and mortal women because he frankly has better things to do with his time.

The only times that he actually causes harm to anyone is when he ‘kidnaps’ Persephone, although I personally go along with the version where she went to the underworld of her own volition given the dynamic of the rest of their relationship, and when Pirithous tried to take Persephone from the underworld as he was incredibly arrogant and thought that only a godly wife would do for him. There’s also Minthe, but that situation wasn’t really his fault so I don’t count it.

As a reward for making it to the end of this, here are some gorgeous illustrations of more modern Hades and Persephone doing cute couple things. I am almost 100% sure that they’re by elfishness on Tumblr:

Edit: This was written very late at night during a bout of insomnia so I apologise for the fact that it doesn’t flow very well in parts, but I hope that the gist of what I’m trying to say comes through alright!