ghost of Erigone, a legendary maiden who hanged herself after the death of her father
Icarius, to whom Dionysus had given the gift of wine (Burkert 1985:241; Johnston
1999a:219–24).
Chthonic Deities and Denizens of the Underworld
We sometimes refer to the Olympian deities, who generally have no contact with the
underworld, asouranic, or ‘‘of the sky.’’ These deities’ functions involved the upper
world and the living. Usually ouranic deities did not venture to Hades, but there were
exceptions. Dionysus went to retrieve his mother Semele from the dead, for example
(Clark 1979: 99–108). And sometimes Olympians such as Hermes, one of whose
roles was to accompany the souls of the dead to Hades, earned the epithet Cthonios,
orchthonic, ‘‘of the earth.’’ Deities whose functions included the earth itself (such as
agriculture), or whose functions involved the dead, were considered chthonic. Thus
Demeter, too, had a chthonic aspect as a fertility goddess, since seeds are planted in
the earth and were seen as representing death and renewal (burial and rebirth), and so
she was sometimes referred to as Chthonia. And deities who dwelled in the under-
world and rarely ventured outside it are regularly referred to as chthonic. Ceremonies
of worship for ouranic and chthonic deities reflected the contrasts of light and dark,
living and dead, above and below the earth. Those for ouranic deities were usually
performed in daylight on high altars, directed upwards toward the sky, but since
chthonic deities were believed to reside in the earth, sacrifices to them were generally
performed at night, directed down into the earth. Liquid offerings of milk, blood, or
honey were poured into low altars or pits. Also, the animals sacrificed to ouranic
deities were usually white, whereas those sacrificed to chthonic deities were black
(Burkert 1985:199).
Chthonic deities included Hades himself, Lord of the Underworld, whose main
foray above ground was his abduction of Persephone, who became his wife. She, too,
is considered chthonic, although she spent part of each year with her mother
Demeter and other Olympians. Hades, though he ruled over the souls of the dead
underground, did notcausedeath, did not take souls, and was not an equivalent to
the Christian Satan: Hades was not a fallen angel, was not evil, and did not lead
mortals into sin. Likewise, the eponymous kingdom of Hades was not Hell; it was a
Land of the Dead, a place for the souls of the deceased – at least for those of them
who had been buried properly. Hades and Persephone ruled over what is, in many
accounts, a relatively gloomy place, guarded by monstrous creatures and inhabited by
incorporeal souls of the dead.
Hades, unlike the Olympians, had virtually no cult following. There were no grand
temples to Hades, no giant cult statues. His only real worship site seems to have been
in southern Greece, where the Eleans had built a temple to him, and at Mount
Minthe near Elis was a temenos, or piece of land set apart as sacred to Hades
(Pausanias 6.25.2; Strabo 8.3.14–15). Hades rarely appears as a major character in
myths. He was depicted far less in Greek art than his Olympian siblings (Garland
2001:53). Hades was feared more than he was worshiped, because of the Greeks’
uncertainty about what death meant, when death would come for each of them, and
whether it was final. In other words, they feared what Hades represented. In any case,
90 D. Felton