He was
one of the Olympian gods. He was the son of the Titans, Cronus and Rhea,
and the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. When he and his brothers drew lots
to divide the world after they had deposed of their father, Cronus, Zeus
won command of the heavens, Poseidon of the sea, and Hades of the underworld.
He became known as Pluto, the god of wealth, because of the precious metals
in the Earth.It was rare for Pluto to leave his realm to visit the Earth
or Olympus. (His most famous visit to Earth was the time he saw Persephone
and carried her off to be his wife.) Appropriately the planet named for
Pluto is the one farthest from the sun. Although he was a grim and pitiless
god, unappeased by either prayer or sacrifice, he was not evil. As Pluto
he was called the lord of riches, because both crops and precious metals
were believed to come from his kingdom below ground.
The name was also used for the underworld itself. This world of the dead
was ruled by Pluto and Persephone. Guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed,
dragon-tailed dog, it was either underground or in the far west and was
separated from the land of the living by five rivers. One of these was the
Styx, across which the dead were ferried. Somewhere in the darkness of the
underworld, Hades' palace was located. It was represented as a many-gated,
dark and gloomy palace, thronged with guests, and set in the midst of shadowy
fields and an apparition-haunted landscape. Three judges in the Erebus region,
where the dead pass as soon as they die, decided the fate of souls; heroes
went to the Elysian fields (Elysium), and evildoers to Tartarus, lowest
region of Hades, where the wicked were punished.
The five rivers of Hades were: Phlegethon, Acheron, Styx, Lethe, and Cocytus.
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