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Hades and Persephone

Recent commission! The details on this one were crazy fun to paint, I spent a lot of time on it but I'm really happy with the result :)

Genius of Death, 1890 - oil on canvas

𝖓𝖞𝖝 ; 𝖕𝖗𝖎𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖉𝖎𝖆𝖑 𝖌𝖔𝖉𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖘 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖓𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 🌚🖤

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl, Greek, 320 BCE

Greek mythology from A to Z:

Hekate Triformis

Imperial age, 50–350 AD

Rijksmuseum van Oudheden

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A Roman gold bracelet in the form of a coiled snake, it’s from Pompeii, circa 1st AD. 

Allegory of Spring - oil on canvas

Nemesis

125 AD–149 AD

White marble

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli

The first important distinction is that Hades is not a monster and is not depicted as disfigured or undead. This is in comparison to the half-dead Hel, the skeletal Reaper, and the mummified god Osiris. While the Greeks feared Hades, this is because they feared death itself, not because Hades was a fearsome figure. He was something of a dark copy of his glorious and beloved brother Zeus. Moreover, Hades does not fulfill some of the other roles of a traditional death god. For example, he neither collects the souls of the dead, nor does he judge them when they arrive in his realm. In truth, it is a bit vague as to what Hades actually does with his time besides occasionally judging the crimes of those heroes who seek to enter his realm and then leave it again. He seems to be a force for balance, justice and order, rather than an active character.

This is distinctly different from the role of the "psychopomp," which is the collector of souls. In Greek myth, this role was filled by Hermes (Mercury for the Romans), who carried the dead down to Charon on the River Styx. The Christians did not have a simple replacement for Hermes in this role. The Biblical figure of the Angel of Death is a bit vague; the Bible does not say that he carried away all dead souls but that he was an instrument of punishment in Egypt. That said, the Angel of Death was fused with imagery of the Greek personification of death, Thanatos (a sword-bearing, winged man) and kept as a figure in popular myth. Occasionally, the Christians did believe that the Devil would carry the souls of those he had won to his side, but they also developed the most popular personification of Death: the robed and hooded man/skeleton with a scythe. Called the Grim Reaper in English, but having many other names as well (such as Ankou amongst the Bretons), he is the archetypal psychopomp.

Thus, it’s apparent that Hades was quite different than many of the beings worshiped or feared by the Greeks neighbors. In fact, he appears to have more in common with the royal sky gods like Zeus, Jupiter, El (in Mesopotamia), Ammon (in Egypt) and even Yahweh (amongst the Israelites). He is a regal, majestic man with a beautiful (if stern) appearance and bears all of the trappings of royalty (like a throne and a scepter). The Greeks were great believers in the importance of order and civilization and saw their gods not as the creators of the world but as the ones who brought order and justice to it. Not coincidentally, this is how the Greeks saw themselves as they built colonies and conquered much of the ancient world. It is within this role, the conquering overlord bringing law to chaos, that Hades appears to fit most closely.”