PHIL 1120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Homeric Hymns, Hieros Gamos, Hurrians
Document Summary
The third brother is hades, whose name later greeks understood to mean. With persephone he rules the underworld as the "host of many", again a euphemism for his association with death. As a god of death he is not worshipped and therefore he receives no homeric hymn but because of the greek recognition that the dead have some mysterious powers, he is worshipped as ploutos, or "wealth". Since he dwells under the earth, and he is particularly identified with the wealth of the earth. Hades can also be identified as the place rather than the god. Hera is worshipped as the wife of zeus, as the homeric hymn to hera makes clear. This was an instance of a "sacred marriage", since in the olympian generation hera takes over the qualities associated with earth. Her name may mean "ripe" (for marriage), or perhaps it is a feminine form of "hero".
