Hades

You shall yield glory to myself, and your soul [ psukhê] to Hades of the noble steeds.

and the arrow in his brawny shoulder caused him great anguish till Paieon healed him by spreading soothing herbs on the wound, for Hades was not of mortal mold.

Could I but see him go down into the house of Hades, my heart would forget its heaviness.

to the courts of death, winged Hades glaring from beneath his dark brows.

for thou in days gone by didst find salvation for him, so now be thou a saviour from the toils of death and stay bloodthirsty Hades.

Let Hades know, that swarthy god, and that old man who sits to row and steer alike at his death-ferry, that he hath carried o’er the lake of Acheron in his two-oared skiff a woman peerless amidst her sex.

But Rhea was subject in love to Cronos and bore splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken.

There, in front, stand the echoing halls of the god of the lower-world, strong Hades, and of awful Persephone.

Also he came to the bed of all-nourishing Demeter, and she bore white-armed Persephone whom Aidoneus carried off from her mother;

You must go to the house of Hades and of dread Persephone to consult the ghost [ psukhê] of the blind Theban seer [ mantis] Teiresias whose mind [ phrenes] is still in place within him.

On this, many dead men's ghosts [ psukhai] will come to you, and you must tell your men to skin the two sheep that you have just killed, and offer them as a burnt sacrifice with prayers to Hades and to Persephone.

When, however, death took him to the house of Hades, his sons divided his estate and cast lots for their shares, but to me they gave a holding and little else;

Hades craves these rites, nevertheless.

As to whose deed it is, Hades and the dead are witnesses.

I, therefore, will ask those below for pardon, since I am forced to this, and will obey those who have come to authority.

Well, then, does the tragedy write concerning Hades:

There in Hades’ courts shall I lie apart from you.

I have begged this from the powers below, to find a tomb and fall into my mother’s hands.

I have come from out of the charnel-house and gates of gloom, where Hades dwells apart from gods, I Polydorus, a son of Hecuba, the daughter of Cisseus, and of Priam.

You, too, Hades of the world below, I call as an ally;

you who have received so many bodies slain by my sword for Helen’s sake, you have your payment;

Hades sings in laments, in chants—not songs of triumph.

For Achilles was Hades after all, not the son of Peleus, whom you held out to me as a husband, and you brought me in a chariot to a bloody wedding by treachery.

Hurled the pollution of Hellas to Hades!

No longer, after she is married to Hades.

-->“Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me:

Then Aidoneus the Ruler of Many openly got ready his deathless horses beneath the golden chariot.

And Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom.

also that he only should be the appointed messenger to Hades, who, though he takes no gift, shall give him no mean prize.

But if someone hoards hidden wealth at home, and attacks others with mockery, he fails to consider that he is giving up his soul to Hades without glory.

from there they seized the grave-column, monument to Hades, a polished stone, and hurled it at the chest of Polydeuces.

Hades is forgotten by a man with good accomplishments.

nor did Hades keep his staff unmoved, with which he leads mortal bodies down to the hollow path of the dead.

And now beneath the earth—

O House of Hades and Persephone!

Did Hades have some greater desire to feast on my offspring than on hers?

To see the netherworld home.

If only murderous Hades would join me in death to my aged father!

Where the favor of the nether night is stored up, there is no room for sorrow;

Chorus:

he lays waste to the house of Cadmus, but enriches Hades with groans and tears.

You can see life after life speed away, like a bird on the wing, swifter than irresistible fire, to the shore of the western god.