Hades

He went down into Hades, and, having crushed it, freed the souls shut up there from the beginning of the ages.

but the rich man was given over to the flame of bitter torment in Hades;

and your soul they will cast down into the depths of the earth, into the condemnation of Hades, until the final resurrection,

"For the feet of folly bring those who use her down to Hades with death, and her tracks are not firmly set.

but many are the ways that lead off, the sins that lead far astray.

For we believe there are two paths in Hades — one of the just, the other of the impious.

Many a brave soul [ psukhê] did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so was the will of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

if I had had the sense to foresee all this, when Eurystheus sent him to the house of Hades, to fetch the hell-hound from Erebos, he would never have come back alive out of the deep waters of the river Styx.

or I will hurl him down into dark Tartaros far into the deepest pit under the earth, where the gates are iron and the floor bronze, as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth, that you may learn how much the mightiest I am among you.

yea, and from Hades’ murky dungeons did Heracles bring thy father up;

that he went down to Hades’ halls, his body burnt by the fire’s fierce flame, is past belief;

Thou that didst make him go down alive even to Hades, and wouldst send him with an order to slay hydras and lions?

If he is already dead and in the house of Hades, then, alas!

the gate of the cloisters and the court beyond them are full of ghosts trooping down into the night of Hades;

It is long and difficult, but I must go through with it, for thus the shade [ psukhê] of Teiresias prophesied concerning me, on the day when I went down into Hades to ask about my return [ nostos] and that of my companions.

Then it seems we must exercise supervision also, in the matter of such tales as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise it, since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are destined to be warriors.

“Would you, then, have us proceed to consider how such men may be produced in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to have ascended from Hades to the gods?

For such men as cast about for caterers and cooks, and ransack every land and sea, paying tribute as to some harsh master, are pitiable in their busyness, suffering nothing more endurable than those punished in Hades, who simply card wool into fire, and carry water in a sieve, and pour into a jar full of holes,

So too among the sophists you will find many growing old in ignorance, wandering in their words far worse than Odysseus, Homer says, on the sea, and he would sooner come to Hades, like that man, than become a good man in speaking and in hearing.

Beware it be not a phantom from that nether world.

Then would Hades for that one have gotten these two faithful souls at once, crossing the nether lake together.

’Tis not lawful yet for thee to hear her speak, ere she be purified from the gods below and the third day be come.

Won’t it then be a little thing for her to turn aside to Hades?

O father, Agamemnon, you lie in Hades, by the butchery of your wife and Aegisthus.

Heracles:

Heracles:

Heracles:

either Poseidon, out of respect to my prayer, will cast his dead body into the house of Hades;

Me thy reverent worshipper, me who left all men behind in purity, plunged thus into yawning Hades’neath the earth, reft of life;

We pity thy sad fate, gone as thou art to Hades’ halls as the price of thy marriage with Jason.

suppose that they have found sufficient means to live, and seen their children grow to man’s estate and walk in virtue’s path, still if fortune so befall, comes Death and bears the children’s bodies off to Hades.

Lead on at once, that I may wed my husband for his home in Hades’ halls.

Oh, you, who before made the Achaeans grieve, eldest of the sons I bore to Priam, take me to your rest in Hades’ halls!

These were destroyed by their own hands and passed to the dank house of chill Hades, and left no name:

With us and all mankind, it is clear, in the light of these reflections, that their fame is now assured, but what of the lower world?

But if in Hades we are conscious still and cared for by some god, as we are led to think, then surely those who defended the worship of the gods, when it was being overthrown, must receive from him the greatest care of all

But Orpheus led the dead back from Hades, whereas Busiris brought death to the living before their day of destiny.

For example, Heracles was ordered by Eurystheus to bring the cattle from Erytheia and to obtain the apples of the Hesperides and to fetch Cerberus up from Hades and to perform other labors of that kind, labors which would bring no benefit to mankind, but only danger to himself;

So grateful was Theseus to Peirithos, his partner in the abduction, that when Peirithos wished to woo Persephon, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and summoned him to the descent into Hades to obtain her, when Theseus found that he could not by his warnings dissuade his friend, although the danger was manifest he nevertheless accompanied him, for he was of opinion that he owed this debt of gratitu …

The many terrible misfortunes that happened to him both in his life, the last of which was the utter overthrow of his country, and in Hades, after his death, the balancing (ταλαντεία) of the stone above his head, in wonderful agreement with his name;

but if you escape after so disgracefully requiting wrong with wrong and evil with evil, breaking your compacts and agreements with us, and injuring those whom you least ought to injure—yourself, your friends, your country and us—we shall be angry with you while you live, and there our brothers, the laws in Hades’ realm, will not receive you graciously;

and when she achieved this deed, it was judged so noble by gods as well as men that, although among all the many doers of noble deeds they are few and soon counted to whom the gods have granted the privilege of having their souls sent up again from Hades, hers they thus restored in admiration of her act.

a dialogue in the Shades on Special Pleading Reform.

The shade of the learned Baron newly arrived in Hades complains to Crogate of his treatment by the court of Rhadamanthus, a court below, but from which, to the Baron’s indignation, error does not lie.

The rest he will tell to the shades in Hades.

So far as that corpse is concerned, I am in Hades.

If only that man had first passed into the depths of the sky or into Hades, the common home of all, before he taught the Greeks the shared plague of Ares’ detested arms!

But as the oracles stand, at least, Polybus has swept them with him to his rest in Hades.

If I had sight, I know not with what eyes I could even have looked on my father, when I came to the house of Hades, or on my miserable mother, since against both I have sinned such sins as hanging myself could not punish.