The Truth About Hades & The Underworld | Greek Mythology Explained

which Greek god do you associate with evil it's Hades we all know you're thinking Hades but why is it Hades it's probably because in our modern thinking the ruler of the underworld equals Satan and Satan equals evil but Greek mythology King of the underworld Hades is not evil in fact Hades is a good guy and way way better than his [ __ ] brother Zeus and posidon and a lot of the blame for that modern lie of Hades being evil goes back to Disney's 1997 Hercules movie which did this to Hades name is Hades Lord

of the Dead hi how you doing but that entire Hercules movie was just all kinds of wrong like let's [ __ ] on Disney for a second shall we Zeus is not a family man man that dude cheats with Sport and he doesn't just cheat with women who are consensual by the way Hera is certainly not Hercules's loving mother because Hercules is is one of Zeus's illegitimate children and Hera hated Hercules and tried to kill him when he was a baby and when she failed at baby murder she decided to ruin his life and making

and murder his own wife and children by the way and Disney even messed up the basics because the son of Zeus is not called Hercules it's herac Hercules is a Roman name by the way it's funny because I'm trying to be as smart as here but I'm pronouncing Heracles wrong cuz I think the Greeks say it like IRAs or something like that and also Hades was not a dude with weird blue flames for hair he was never depicted as that nor was he ugly some texts even say that Hades is the most handsome of the

three big Greek Brothers so not ugly not evil just misunderstood and that's why I call this [Music] episode as always there are extra facts about Hades that don't fit the flow of my storytelling but are added at the end because I want to give you everything there to know about Hades so watch until the end to get everything there is to know about [Music] Hades was Hades feared yes but the fear came with the territory because Hades rules over death and death is naturally scary but you should know that in Greek mythology the afterward death

is not a bad place everybody goes there after life The Good the Bad and the Ugly but still people aren't exactly fans of death and feared it of course and Hades just happened to rule over that which is inevitable and if you're going to die anyway why waste your time praying to or even thinking about Hades best to just avoid it all together never mention hades's name and turn him into a taboo with his brothers King Sparkles and Aquaman you could at least feel like you know your farm being struck by lightning or your ship

being sunk at Sea can be avoided with some good old worshiping but death n not so much so the fear stemmed from the inevitable not the evil and in fact death and the Ganda World included Paradise Heaven and Hell and it's also not even Hades who claims your soul when you die the Greek version of the Grim Reaper is actually Thanatos who has the awkward job of showing up like hey what up bro BR he dead except Thanos doesn't look like this and was also described as beautiful and wined so he would look more similar

to his brother hypnos who was in charge of sleep and Thanos and hypnos were in fact considered to be almost doing the same task death by Thanos was as painless and natural as sleep and there was nothing evil or subjective about it you know but random his passionate fair to rich and poor alike and yeah yes Thanos is very much named after Thanos who inspired the character of Thanos so Thanatos collected The Souls of the dead and then Hermes would use a speed to actually transport them to the entrance of the underworld where he hands

them off to Charon who is the Fairman that then fairies the soul across the river sticks into the actual under world but this is where it all comes to a bit of a hitch the stop you had to pay Chon for that Duty because this guy was all like [ __ ] that have my and that is why the ancient Greeks buried the Dead with two coins to pay Chon if you don't have that money your ass is not getting into the underworld and you have to wait that the shores of the river sticks for

100 years and then yeah then you actually get a free ride into the underworld because you hang around the barber shop long enough sooner or later you're going to get a haircut and once you get across the river sticks congrats yay you made it into the underworld and the three judges will now go through your browser history and every action you took in life to determine whether you deserve to be happy forever or Eternal suffering where you're punished forever most of us who live the normal life without great heroics or terribly evil Deeds would go

to The asdel Meadows basically a second life in the Underworld which would be a lot like life on Earth and after 100 Years of that you drink from the river leth which wipes your memories and then you are reborn the special people from Greek mythology go to elesium not Simple Jack special like great Deeds super pip glorious kind of special and even within that paradise alium there was the aisle of the bless basically the Gated of community for the actual Heroes like Achilles Atalanta orsus you know the special people and everyone in elium though gets

to party and feast all day return to Earth is eventually optional but it's like why would you leave in Turnal paradise and the scum of the Earth was sent to actual hell called taros note you are also considered SC to Earth if you just disrespected the gods or hurt their ego by beating them in a contest because oh my God H in tatos you received Eternal punishment specially designed by Hades that punishment could be fun stuff like burning on a spinning wheel for all eternity or healthy exercise like pushing a rock up a hill for

all eternity or nutritious meat plan like starving and dying of thirst for all eternity then there's also the fields of mourning for those who punch their own ticket while mourning their lost love which was probably a super fun place filled with super fun people and remember how I said the concept of death and sleep were very similar in its respective gods or brothers that's also reflected in the Underworld the land of the dreams was also down here though while hypnos sent people to sleep it was Morpheus the god of Dreams who ruled over the land

of the dreams and all of this the entire underworld was protected by seberus the three-headed dog bouncer of The Under World and Hades was in charge of all of that meticulously so by Zeus and zidon were getting drunk meddling with Mortals murdering abusing kidnapping women causing more drama than a goddamn telen NOA and being responsible for all the Greek stories and actually kind of keeping this channel alive thank you Hades was a stickler for rules and just did his job 247 married to order and that only made Hades seem even weirder because the loner hanging

out with the dad it's not exactly a good ther profile and it fit the already biased and fearful opinion people had of him like Zeus and posidon would be kind of like the jocks from the football team basking in glory while they're actually terrible people and Hades is the good-hearted loner that is misunderstood because he keeps himself and just labeled as evil because he's misunderstood and people don't get it look at me all that being said Hades did kind of kidnap his wife [Music] pany but that's not as much of a scy in the closet

as you might think first of all I repeat that Zeus and posidon kidnapped before breakfast but one man's evil does not justify another man's so here's the thing though Zeus was pran's father and promised Hades that he could marry pepan which was a father's right at the time note that it was not a father's right at the time to get his own daughter pregnant especially against her will but Zeus managed to get his daughter pfan pregnant against her will anyway yeah uh that's a different story I'll tell you about that another time the problem was

that Zeus didn't tell panie about this so Hades kidnapped her without her even knowing and Zeus also didn't tell pran's mother theer about this so theer SC at the Earth looking for her daughter and it all turned into a pretty major drama because deer was pretty important she's the goddess of harvest and Humanity eating was at deer's mercy and she promised Zeus that she'd turn his beloved world of the living into the underworld AKA I'm going to let everybody stop starving this [ __ ] unless you give me my daughter back so Zeus went to

Hades like hey yo about that niece of yours you kidnapped the white back panie yeah I'm going to need her back problem was Hades was uncontrollably in love with panie and truly treated panie like a queen like you don't understand men in Greek mythology don't usually see their women as equals but Hades did he intended to share all his power and everything with pranie and he was loyal all that was unheard of for a mortal man in general back then but for a God forget about it plus as I said Hades was often set to

be the most handsome of his brothers so really before long pranie was like this isn't all that bad I get to be Queen of the underworld they call me dread pranie I got mad respect from the living I got mad respect from the dead and I got mad respect from my husband and the man is pretty damn fine I [Music] mean in fact pranie didn't just like it hell I love you before she knew it pranie fell in love with Hades so that meant that when Zeus forced Hades to send panie back Hades came up

with a plan to save his future with pany if she ate food from the underworld no one could take her from him because once you leave from the underworld you can never fully leave no one can change it and because pfan was in her Fields she was in on it and ate three pum grenade seeds and was forever bound to the underworld and could only return to the world of the living for three months of the year her mother the meter was overjoyed whenever her daughter returned to her and the world's Harvest was in full

swing for 9 months of the year but those three months when panie returned to the underworld to her husband Hades the was sad and basically said man screw these crops every everybody can starve for all I care and that's how we got [Music] winter extra notes fun fact that I absolutely have to give credit to overly sarcastic Productions too who did the research on this common misconception that I'm about to share with you panie is often thought to be the goddess of spring since when she visits Earth spring Dawns she is not that is just

the Meer being happy pan is very much only one thing Queen dread the lady of the underworld and in fact there are many many more surviving ancient texts about pany in that role than even Hades as the underworld ruler in fact pranie was mentioned as the ruler of the underworld 1,000 years before Hades was first mentioned so there's legit reason to assume that prapan was once believed to be the soul ruler of the underworld and this is why the story I just told you maybe only came later as a means to make all the main

rulers male because men can deal with women EMP power especially not in ancient times this is supported by the fact that underworld gods were never really referred to by name since it is believed to bring death this was common for Hades who was never really mentioned by his actual name and by the way that's where JK Rowling got the whole he who must not be named thing for Voldemort from well throughout all ancient texts panie has so many aliases you think her name was Jennifer Garner get it Alias forgot it's a ' 90s joke the

point is people avoided saying Pan's name long before Hades was even a thing and they'd only have a reason to do that if they feared her if she was in fact the original ruler of the [Music] underworld