Aidonian's blog

Who is Ploutonas? Ploutonas is the Greek God of the Underworld. He is basically another name for Aidoneos(Hades). Since Aidoneos was feared and people were afraid to speak his name, they gave Him other names. Ploutonas or Plouton is one of them. His name means “Giver of Wealth” and in that, He is connected to another deity called Ploutos, which means “Wealth”. In that Aidoneos is seen as a more positive side of the God who is considered gloomy. As minerals are found in the Earth, Ploutos and Ploutonas are seen as different, the opposite of what Aidoneos is, the Lord of the Underworld. The usage of Plouton or Ploutonas as another name comes from the Eleusinian mysteries, where Ploutonas 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.

Ploutonas and Hades differ in character but they are not distinct Gods. That much is clear. They share two dominant myths in Hellenic cosmogony. Athenian plyawrights of the classical period and Plato present Ploutonas as the God to whom the heroes to go to to request a object during a quest while Hades appears as the one who is given the domain of the Underworld when the world was divided after the defeat of the Titans.

As Ploutonas 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 Ploutonas was one of the traditional 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 Ploutonas with the “strewing of a couch”. At Eleusis, Ploutonas had his own priestess. Ploutonas 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 Ploutonas, but in reference to the underground place: Ploutonas is the ruler who presides over it in a harmonious partnership with Persephone.By the end of the 4th century BC, the name Ploutonas 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 Ploutonas

Hesychius identifies Ploutonas 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. Than again the title of Euboleus was also given to other deities as well. It is interesting to note that while Hades himself did not receive or barely received cultus except during funerals, He had other names where he was given cultus to. The ancient Greeks were affraid to call Him in the sense that He would come and take them. By that, it should be clear that this was more referred to Thanatos than Hades. By the 5th century, Thanatos was assimilated into Hades. The ancient Greeks called Hades also Theon Khthonios, Zeus Khthonios, Hesperos Theos, Enerthera Theos, and later He would also be called Dis Pater, Orcus, Pluto, which was the Latin form of Ploutonas.