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In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, Pluto () was the ruler of the Greek underworld. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself. Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife. Ploutōn was frequently conflation with Plutus, the Greek 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.William Hansen, Classical Mythology: A Guide to the Mythical World of the Greeks and Romans (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 182. The name Ploutōn came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which Pluto was venerated as both a stern ruler and a loving husband to Persephone. The couple received souls in the afterlife and are invoked together in religious inscriptions, being referred to as Plouton and as Kore respectively. 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 in myth is of him abducting Persephone to be his wife and the queen of his realm.Hansen, Classical Mythology,, p. 180. Plouton as the name of the ruler of the underworld first appears in Greek literature of the Classical Greece, 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 Greek hero to the underworld.Hansen, Classical Mythology, pp. 180–181.
Plūtō (; genitive Plūtōnis) is the Romanization 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. Pluto ( Pluton in French and German, Plutone in Italian) becomes the most common name for the classical ruler of the underworld in subsequent Western culture.
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."Hesiod, Works and Days 465–9.
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. 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. 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.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. 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."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.
During the Roman Empire, the Greek geographer Strabo (1st century AD) makes a distinction between Pluto and Hades. In writing of the mineral wealth of ancient Iberia (Hispania), he says that among the Turdetani, it is "Pluto, and not Hades, who inhabits the region down below."Strabo 3.2.9, citing Poseidonius as his source, who in turn cites Demetrius of Phalerum on the 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). 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.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.
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).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. 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,In Book 6 of the Aeneid (the catabasis of Aeneas), Vergil also names the ruler of the underworld more often as Dis than Pluto. and Claudian uses Pluto only once; translators and editors, however, sometimes supply the more familiar "Pluto" when other epithets appear in the source text.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. 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.Radford, The Lost Girls, p. 22 et passim. 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.
Justin Martyr (2nd century AD) alludes to children of Pluto, but neither names nor enumerates them.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. Hesychius (5th century AD) mentions a "son of Pluto."Hesychius, lexicon entry on Ἰσοδαίτης ( Isodaitês), 778 in the 1867 edition of Schmidt. 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.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"). Macaria, or "blessedness," was a daughter of Hades, according to the Suda.
In The Faerie Queene (1590s), Edmund Spenser invents a daughter for Pluto whom he calls Lucifera."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. 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.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. Spenser incorporated aspects of the mysteries into The Faerie Queene.Douglas Brooks-Davies, entry on "Mysteries" in The Spenser Encyclopedia, pp. 486–487.
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.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. 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.Geoffrey Miles, Classical Mythology in English Literature: A Critical Anthology (Routledge, 1999), p. 54ff.
The demonstration of Orpheus's power depends on the normal obduracy of Pluto; the Augustan poet Horace describes him as incapable of tears.Horace, Carmen 2.14.6–7, inlacrimabilem Plutona (Greek accusative instead of Latin Plutonem). 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 John Milton in Il Penseroso (106–107): "Such Music notes ... / Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek."A.S.P. Woodhouse et al., A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton (Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 327.
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 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. 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.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 ; Betrand A. Goldgar, Henry Fielding: Miscellanies (Wesleyan University Press, 1993), vol. 2, p. xxxviii.
In the ritual texts of the mystery religions preserved by the so-called Orphic or Bacchic Totenpass, from the late 5th century BC onwardFritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston, Ritual Texts and the Afterlife (Routledge, 2007), first page (not numbered). the name Hades appears more frequently than Plouton, but in reference to the underground place: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 Thessaloniki. Plouton is the ruler who presides over it in a harmonious partnershipKevin 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. with Persephone.Giovanni Casadio and Patricia A. Johnston, "Introduction", Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia (University of Texas Press, 2009), p. 21. By the end of the 4th century BC, the name Plouton appears in Greek metrical inscriptions.Tsagalis, Inscribing Sorrow, p. 101. Two fragmentary tablets greet Pluto and Persephone jointly,Tablets 15 (Eleutherae 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. 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,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. shall be yours, next to Persephone and Pluto.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.
Hesychius identifies Pluto with Eubuleus,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). 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.Kevin Clinton, "The Mysteries of Demeter and Kore," in A Companion to Greek Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 347–353. 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.Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, vol. 3, p. 145.
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 translations of the Orphic Hymn to Pluto are from Apostolos N. Athanassakis, The Orphic Hymns (Scholars Press, 1977).
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. Act of Thomas 50, as cited and discussed by Susan E. Myers, Spirit Epicleses in the Acts of Thomas (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), p. 174.
A set of curse tablets written in Doric Greek and found in a tomb addresses a Pasianax, "Lord to All,"Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 212, with English translation of the curse. sometimes taken as a title of Pluto,Gager, Curse Tablets, p. 131, with translations of both tablets, and note 35. but more recently thought to be a magical name for the corpse.Derek Collins, Magic in the Ancient Greek World (Blackwell, 2008), p. 73. Pasianax is found elsewhere as an epithet of Zeus, or in the tablets may invoke a daimon like Abrasax.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.
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 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."Pausanias 5.20. 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).Natale Conti, Mythologiae 2.9, edition of 1651, pp. 173–174.
A golden key (chrusea klês) was laid on the tongue of initiates by priests at EleusisSophocles, 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). and was a symbol of the revelation they were obligated to keep secret.Robert Turcan, Les religions de l'Asie dans la vallée du Rhône (Brill, 1972), p. 26. 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 Aeon.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. 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.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.
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 Tartarus night," crowned with a wreath made of ebony as suitable for the kingdom he governs. 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. The horses of Pluto are usually black, but Ovid describes them as "sky-colored" ( caeruleus, from Caelus, "sky"), which might be blue, greenish-blue, or dark blue.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.
The Renaissance mythographer Natale Conti says wreaths of narcissus, Adiantum, and cypress were given to Pluto.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. 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. 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. Narcissus wreaths were used in early times to crown Demeter and Persephone, as well as the Furies (Erinyes).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. The flower was associated with narcotic drugginess ( narkê, "torpor"),"Death and Greek Myths," in Greek and Egyptian Mythologies, edited by Yves Bonnefoy (University of Chicago Press, 1991, 1992), p. 110. fascinus,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. and imminent death;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. to dream of crowning oneself with narcissus was a bad sign.Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.77, as noted by Jebb, Sophocles, p. 115. 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.Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.505; Zimmerman, The Pastoral Narcissus, p. 48. The Styx here is a pool.
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.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." Historian of medicine John M. Riddle has suggested that the adianthus was one of the ferns Dioscorides called asplenium and prescribed as a contraceptive (atokios).Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, pp. 31, 82, 180 (note 5). 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 "".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.
The cypress (Greek cyparissus, Latin cupressus) has traditional associations with mourning.Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld, p. 25. In ancient Attica, households in mourning were garlanded with cypress,Servius, note to Aeneid 3.680. and it was used to fumigate the air during .Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 17.7.34. In the myth of Cyparissus, a youth was transformed into a cypress, consumed by grief over the accidental death of a pet Red Deer.Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.106ff.; Servius, note to Vergil's Georgics 1.20. A "white cypress" is part of the topography of the underworld that recurs in the Totenpass 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.Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld, pp. 25–28.
The tradition of the mystery religions favors Pluton/Hades as a loving and faithful partner to Persephone, but one ancient myth that preserves a lover for him parallels the abduction and also has a vegetative aspect.The nymph Minthe, 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). 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 Elysium. The tree was the Populus alba (Greek leukē), the leaves of which are white on one side and dark on the other, representing the duality of upper and underworld.Servius, note to Vergil's Eclogues 7.61. Persephone is not mentioned. 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 initiatesBernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld, pp. 93 and 124–125, citing Harpocration. and by champion athletes participating in funeral games.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. Like other plants associated with Pluto, white poplar was regarded as a contraceptive in antiquity.Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, p. 33. The relation of this tree to the white cypress of the mysteries is debated.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.
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.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." 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.Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel Book 5, Chapter 8. Erasmus calls it the "helmet of Orcus"Erasmus, Adagia 2.10.74 (Orci galea). 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 in the execution."Francis Bacon, Essays Civil and Moral 21, "Of Delays."
In the Middle Ages, classical underworld figures began to be depicted with a pitchfork.Cook, Zeus, vol. 2, p. 803. Early Christian writers had identified the classical underworld with Hell, and its denizens as demons or devils.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. 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.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. 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.Robertson et al., Drawings by the Carracci from British Collections, pp. 78–79. In Caravaggio's Giove, Nettuno e Plutone (ca. 1597), a ceiling mural based on alchemy allegory, it is Neptune who holds the bident.Creighton Gilbert, Caravaggio and His Two Cardinals (Penn State University Press, 1995), pp. 124–125.
And where do you think Pluto gets his name i.e., if not because he took the best portion? How much better are things below than what Zeus possesses!Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld, pp. 127–128.
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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.Morrow, Plato's Cretan City, pp. 452–453. 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 cannot 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 Cronus himself would suffice to keep them with him in his own far-famed chains.Translation by Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato (London, 1873), vol. 1.Since "the union of body and soul is not better than the loosing,"Plato, Laws 828d, translation from Long, The Twelve Gods, p. 69. death is not an evil. Walter Burkert thus sees Pluto as a "god of dissolution."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. Among the titles of Pluto was Isodaitēs, "divider into equal portions," a title that connects him to the fate goddesses the Moirai.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. Isodaitēs was also a cult title for Dionysus and Helios.H.S. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion: Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Brill, 1993, 1994), p. 119, especially note 93.
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.Plato, Laws 828 B-D; Morrow, Plato's Cretan City p. 452; Long, The Twelve Gods, p. 179. 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.Morrow, Plato's Cretan City, p. 453; Long, The Twelve Gods, p. 179.
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 Dis pater;This parenthetical remark is part of the original text. Several 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. 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,""Titan" usually refers to a class or race of deities, but sometimes means Helios or other divine personifications of the Sun. 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.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. 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. This is the genealogy for Pluto that Boccaccio used in his Genealogia Deorum Gentilium and in his lectures explicating the Divine Comedy of Dante. Boccaccio's Expositions on Dante's Comedy, translated by Michael Papio (University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 332–333, 355.
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 Styx."Rieuwerd Buitenwerf, Book III of the Sibylline Oracles and Its Social Setting (Brill, 2003), p. 157.
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, Synesis), also called Athena. 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.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."
This cosmogony interprets Hesiod allegorically, and so the heaviest element is identified not as the Earth, but as the netherworld of Pluto.Van Amersfoort, "Traces of an Alexandrian Orphic Theogony," p. 23; Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus, p. 150. (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).Arthur Bernard Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1925), p. 746.
In the Stoicism, 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.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. 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.R.M. van den Berg, Proclus' Commentary on the Cratylus in Context: Ancient Theories of Language and Naming (Brill, 2008), pp. 34–35. Plouton derived from ploutein, "to be wealthy," Cornutus said, because "all things are corruptible and therefore are 'ultimately consigned to him as his property.'"David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (University of California Press, 1992), p. 33, citing Epidrome 5.5.7–9.
Within the Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism traditions, Pluto was allegorized as the region where souls are purified, located between the Moon (as represented by Persephone) and the Sun.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. 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 kidnapped 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.This interpretation is attributed to the Greek Neoplatonist Numenius (2nd century AD), by the French Scholasticism William of Conches, as cited and translated by Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Brill, 1985), p. 54.
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.Thompson, "ISmyrna 753," p. 111.
The Smyrna inscription also records the presence of Helios Apollon at the sanctuary. As two forms of Helios, Apollo and Pluto pose a dichotomy:
Pythagoreanism 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.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.
In Ptolemaic Alexandria, at the site of a dream oracle, Serapis was identified with Aion Plutonius.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. 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 6 January."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. In Latin, Plutonius can be an adjective that simply means "of or pertaining to Pluto."As at Horace, Carmen 1.4.17, where the domus ... Plutonia renders in Latin the Greek phrase "house of Hades."
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 games.K.M. Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments," Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), p. 67. Tertullian calls the mallet-wielding figure usually identified as the Etruscan Charun the "brother of Jove,"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. that is, Hades/Pluto/Dis, an indication that the distinctions among these denizens of the underworld were becoming blurred in a Christian context.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. 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 votum), where fallen gladiators were to Dis and Charon received their souls as his payment, to the delight of the underworld Jove (Iovis infernalis).Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 1.379–398; Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1998, 2001), p. 59.
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 Styx. 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.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.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.
Influenced by Ovid and Claudian, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400)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. 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,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. and describes it as "derk and lowe" ("dark and low").Chaucer, "The Knight's Tale" 2082 and 2299. 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).Rossignol, Critical Companion pp. 432, 540. As in the anonymous romance Sir Orfeo ( ca. 1300), Pluto and Proserpina rule over a fantastical world that melds classical myth and fairyland.John M. Fyler, "Pagan Survivals," in A Companion to Chaucer (Blackwell, 2000, 2002), p. 351. Chaucer has the couple engage in a comic that undermines the Christian imagery in the tale, which is Chaucer's most sexually explicit.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). The Scottish poet William Dunbar ca. 1503 also described Pluto as a folkloric supernatural being, "the elrich incubus / in cloke of grene" ("the incubus in cloak of green"), who appears among the of Cupid.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, " of Avernus" ( Metamorphoses 5.670, in his account of the abduction).
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,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!" Christopher Marlowe,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 god Julius Caesar identified with Dis, and 576), but uses both names in the mythological narrative Hero and Leander. and Edmund Spenser.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 "" ( 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).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. Golding translates Ovid's Dis as Pluto,Arthur Golding, Ovid's Metamorphoses (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) passim, with a few instances of Dis; Radford, The Lost Girls, p. 25. a practice that prevails among English translators, despite John Milton's use of the Latin Dis in Paradise Lost.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." 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". 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.
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."John Block Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages (Syracuse University Press, 2000), p. 238; Li Tournoiemenz Anticrit (Le tornoiement de l'Antéchrist) text. In the 15th-century dream allegory The Assembly of Gods, the deities and personifications are "apparelled as medieval nobility"Theresa Lynn Tinkle, Medieval Venuses and Cupids: Sexuality, Hermeneutics, and English Poetry (Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 132. basking in the "magnyfycence" of their "lord Pluto," who is clad in a "smoky net" and reeking of sulphur. The Assembly of Gods, lines 82, 51, 311, 314, in the edition of Oscar Lovell Triggs (London, 1896).
Throughout the Renaissance, images and ideas from classical antiquity entered popular culture through the new medium of print and through masque 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,Entry on "Popular Culture," The Classical Tradition, p. 766. and Pluto was the subject of one of seven pageants presented as part of the 1521 Midsummer Eve festival in Tudor London.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. 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.Nino Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi (Cambridge University Press, 1992, originally published in Italian 1969), passim, especially p. ix. 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.Pirrotta, Music and Theatre from Poliziano to Monteverdi, with Leonardo's drawing (n.p.); Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo: The Machines (Giunti, 1999), p. 72.
The role of Pluto is written for a bass in Jacopo Peri's Euridice (1600);George J. Buelow, A History of Baroque Music (Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 37. Giulio Caccini's Euridice (1602); Luigi Rossi's Orfeo (1647); Antonio Cesti's Il pomo d'oro (1668);Kristiaan Aercke, Gods of Play: Baroque Festive Performances as Rhetorical Discourse (SUNY Press, 1994), p. 230. Antonio Sartorio's Orfeo (1672); Lully's Alceste, a tragédie en musique (1674);Piero Gelli and Filippo Poletti, Dizionario dell'opera 2008 (Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2005, 2007), p. 36. Charpentier's chamber opera La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (1686);Charpentier's Pluto is a bass-baritone. Telemann's Orpheus (1726); and Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (1733).Gelli and Poletti, Dizionario dell'opera 2008, p. 625. 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.James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau (Amadeus Press, 1997), p. 115. Perhaps the most famous of the Orpheus operas is Offenbach's satiric Orpheus in the Underworld (1858),Pluto does not have a singing role in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). 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 orchestration with instrumentation that became conventionally "hellish", established in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo as two , three , a bassoon, and a régale.Aercke, Gods of Play, p. 250; Ringer, Opera's First Master, p. 71.
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.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. 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).Daniel Heartz, Music in European Capitals: The Galant Style, 1720–1780 (W.W. Norton, 2003), pp. 488–492. The Persephone choreographed by Robert Joffrey (1952) was based on André Gide's line "king of winters, the infernal Pluto."Sasha Anawalt, The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company (University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 66.
Major artists who produced works depicting Pluto include:
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.Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune (Disney-Hyperion Books, 2011), p. 111 (vol. 2 of The Heroes of Olympus series).
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