“So…not a competition format? Hmm, too bad.”
Hades tried to keep his cool. “See, if the judges are spirits under my control, they’ll be impossible to influence. The souls who come before the court will be stripped of everything but their essence. They can’t rely on good looks or fancy clothes. They can’t bribe the judges or call character witnesses. All their good and bad deeds will be laid bare, because the judges can literally see right through them. Lying will be impossible.”
“I like it,” Zeus said. “Who will you pick for judges?”
“Probably three deceased mortals who were kings in the upper world,” Hades said. “Kings are used to passing judgment.”
“Good,” Zeus agreed. “As long as the kings are all my sons. Agreed?”
Hades gritted his teeth. He didn’t like his brother getting involved in everything, but since almost every Greek king was a son of Zeus, there would still be plenty of kings to choose from. “Agreed.”
Zeus nodded. “How will you make sure the judgments are enforced, and the souls go where they’re supposed to?”
Hades smiled coldly. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve got that covered.”
When he got back to Erebos, Hades appointed three former kings, all demigod sons of Zeus, as his dead-celebrity judges: Minos, Aiakos, and Rhadamanthys.
Then he rounded up the three Furies—those spirits of vengeance who had been formed from the blood of Ouranos ages before. Hades hired them to be his enforcers, which was a good call, since nobody wanted to cross a demonic grandmother with bad breath and a whip.
Like most daimons, the Furies could take different shapes, but usually they appeared as ugly old ladies with long stringy hair, black tattered robes, and giant bat wings. Their fiery whips could cause excruciating pain to the living or the dead, and they could fly invisibly, so you never knew when they would swoop down on you.
Hades used them to keep the dead in line. Sometimes he let the Furies go nuts and design new tortures for the worst of the doomed souls. He could even send the Furies after living people if they committed a truly horrific crime—like killing a family member, desecrating a temple, or singing Journey songs on karaoke night.
Hades’s next Underworld improvement: he made it a lot easier for spirits of the dead to find their way to Erebos. He convinced Hermes, the messenger god, to keep a lookout for lost souls on the mortal side of the Styx. If Hermes saw any ghosts who looked confused, he would steer them in the right direction and provide them with a handy full-color map, compliments of the Underworld Chamber of Commerce.
Once the souls of the dead made it to the River Styx, the daimon Charon would ferry them across for a standard fee of one silver coin. Hades had convinced him (read: threatened him) to charge everyone the same price.
Hades also spread the word to the mortals up above that they’d better take their funeral rites seriously, or they wouldn’t be allowed into the Underworld. When you died, your family was supposed to make offerings to the gods. They had to give you a decent burial and place a coin under your tongue so you could pay Charon. If you didn’t have a coin, you’d end up haunting the mortal world as a ghost forever, which was both pointless and boring.
How did Hades spread the word among the mortals? He had this army of black-winged nasties called oneiroi, or dream daimons, who visited mortals while they slept, delivering visions or nightmares.
Ever had one of those dreams where you wake up startled because you felt like you were falling? That’s the oneiroi messing with you. They probably picked you up and dropped you, just to be mean. Next time it happens, smack your fist on the floor and yell, “Hades, tell your stupid daimons to knock it off!”
Another upgrade Hades made: he tightened security at the gates of Erebos. He went down to the Tartarus Humane Society and adopted the biggest, baddest dog you can imagine—a monster named Cerberus, who was sort of a cross between a pit bull, a rottweiler, and a rabid woolly mammoth. Cerberus had three heads, so if you were a mortal hero trying to sneak into Hades’s realm, or a dead person trying to sneak out, you had three times the chance of getting spotted and devoured. In addition to razor-sharp fangs and claws, Cerberus supposedly had a mane made out of snakes and a serpent for a tail. I can’t vouch for that. I only met Cerberus once. It was dark, and I was mostly focused on not whimpering or wetting my pants.
Anyway, once the departed spirits got inside the gates, they were sorted out by the three dead-celebrity judges and ushered to their proper places. Like I said earlier, most people hadn’t really done much with their lives, good or bad, so they ended up in the Fields of Asphodel. There they existed as wispy shadows that could only chitter like bats and float around aimlessly, trying to remember who they were and what they were doing—sort of like teachers during first period, before they’ve had enough coffee.
If you had led a good life, you went to Elysium, which was about as nice as you could get in the dark Underworld. You got a mansion of your own, free food and drinks, and pretty much five-star service for whatever you needed. You could hang out with the other lucky good people and chill for eternity. If Elysium got boring, you could choose to drink from the River Lethe and be reborn in a new mortal life.
A few souls were so good, they managed to live three virtuous lives in a row. If that was you, you could retire to the Isles of the Blest, which were Caribbean-type private islands in a lake in the middle of Elysium. Not many people were that lucky or that virtuous. It was sort of like winning the Good Person Powerball Lottery.
If you’d lived an evil life, you got the special naughty treatment—boiling in oil forever, having your skin flayed, getting chased by hungry demons over a field of broken glass, or sliding down a giant razor blade into a pool of lemon juice. You know, the usual. Most of the punishments weren’t very creative, but if you managed to really annoy Hades, he could always come up with new and interesting ways to torture your immortal soul.
A couple of examples?
Tantalus. That dude was messed up. He was a Greek king—a son of Zeus, no surprise—who got invited to share ambrosia and nectar on Mount Olympus with the gods. Big honor, right? But Tantalus got greedy.
“Wow,” he said after dinner, patting his belly. “That’s good stuff! Could I get a doggie bag to share with my friends back home?”
“Holy me!” Zeus swore. “Absolutely not! This ambrosia and nectar is rare and magical stuff. You can’t go sharing it with just anybody.”
“Oh…” Tantalus forced a smile. “Of course. I see how it is. Well…next time, dinner at my place, huh?”
Tantalus should’ve let it go. He should’ve remembered what happened to Prometheus when he tried to take stuff from the gods and share it with mortals. But Tantalus was angry. He felt insulted. The gods didn’t trust him. They didn’t want him to become famous as the mortal who brought ambrosia to earth.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He invited the gods to a feast at his palace, but to get back at them, he decided he would serve them the most insulting meal he could think of. He just wasn’t sure what.
He was standing in his kitchen, staring at the empty cooking pots, when his son Pelops walked in.
“What’s for dinner, Dad?” Pelops asked.
Tantalus had never liked his son. I don’t know why. Maybe Tantalus knew the kid would take over his kingdom someday. Greek kings were always paranoid about stuff like that. Anyway, Tantalus gave his son an evil smile and pulled out a butcher’s knife. “Funny you should ask.”
That night, the gods gathered at Tantalus’s palace for dinner and got served a pot of yummy stew.
“What is this meat?” Demeter said, taking the first bite. “Tastes like chicken.”
Tantalus had meant to wait until all the gods had eaten, but he couldn’t hold in the crazy giggles. “Oh…just a family recipe.”
Zeus frowned and put down his spoon. “Tantalus…what
have you done?”
Hera pushed her bowl away. “And where is your son Pelops?”
“Actually,” Tantalus said, “that’s him in the stew. Surprise, you idiots! Ha, ha! Ha, ha!”
Honestly, I don’t know what he was expecting. Did he think the gods would chuckle and slap him on the back? Oh, Tantalus, you old kidder. Good one!
The Olympians were horrified. After all, they still had post-traumatic stress from getting swallowed by their father, Kronos. Zeus pulled out a lightning bolt, blasted Tantalus to ashes, and turned the king’s soul over to Hades.
“Make a special punishment for this one,” Zeus said. “Something involving food, please.”
Hades was happy to oblige. He sank Tantalus up to his waist in a pool of fresh water, his feet stuck in the riverbed like in cement. Over Tantalus’s head hung the branches of a magical tree that grew all sorts of luscious fragrant fruits.
Tantalus’s punishment was just to stand there forever.
Well, he thought, this isn’t so bad.
Then he got hungry. He tried to grab an apple, but the branches rose just out of reach. He tried for a mango. No luck. He tried jumping, but his feet were stuck. He tried pretending to be asleep so he could launch a surprise attack on the peaches. Again, no luck. Each time, Tantalus was sure he would score a piece of fruit, but he never could.
When he got thirsty, he scooped up water, but by the time his hands reached his mouth, the water had magically evaporated, and his hands were completely dry. He bent down, hoping to gulp straight from the lake, but the entire surface of the water shrank away from him. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get a single drop. He just got hungrier and thirstier, even though food and water were so close—tantalizingly close, which is a word that comes from his name. Next time you want something really badly but it’s just out of reach, you’ve been tantalized.
What’s the moral of the story? I dunno. Maybe: Don’t chop up your son and feed him to your dinner guests. Seems kind of obvious to me, but whatever.
Another guy who got a special punishment was Sisyphus. With a name like Sissy-Fuss you have to figure the guy had issues, but at least he didn’t make his kids into stew. Sisyphus’s problem was that he didn’t want to die.
I can relate to that. I wake up every morning and think: You know what would be good today? Not dying.
But Sisyphus took things too far. One day, Death showed up at his house. And by Death, I mean Thanatos, the god of death, the Grim Reaperino, who was one of Hades’s main lieutenants.
Sisyphus opened the door and found a big guy with black feathery wings looming over him.
“Good afternoon.” Thanatos consulted his notepad. “I have a delivery for Sisyphus—one painful death, requires a signature. Are you Sisyphus?”
Sisyphus tried to hide his panic. “Um…Why, yes! Come in! Just let me get a pen.”
As Thanatos ducked under the low doorway, Sisyphus grabbed the nearest heavy object he could find—a stone pestle he used to grind his flour—and smacked the god of death over the head.
Thanatos passed out cold. Sisyphus tied him up, gagged him, and stuffed him under the bed. When Mrs. Sisyphus came home, she was like, “Why is there a giant black wing sticking out from under the bed?”
Sisyphus explained what had happened. His wife wasn’t pleased.
“This is going to get us both into trouble,” she said. “You should have just died.”
“I love you, too,” Sisyphus muttered. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
It wasn’t fine. Without Thanatos on the job, people stopped dying. At first, nobody objected. If you were supposed to die and you didn’t, why would you complain?
Then a big battle happened between two Greek cities, and Ares, the god of war, got suspicious. He hovered over the battlefield like he always did, ready for an exciting day of carnage. When the two armies clashed, no soldiers fell. They just kept whaling on each other, hacking each other to bits. Things got messy, with plenty of blood and gore, but no one died.
“Where’s Death?” Ares screamed. “This is no fun without Death!”
He flew from the battlefield and started asking all around the world: “Excuse me, have you seen Death? Big guy with black feathery wings? Likes to reap souls?”
Finally somebody mentioned that they’d seen a guy like that heading toward old man Sisyphus’s house.
Ares broke down Sisyphus’s front door. He pushed the old dude aside and spotted Thanatos’s left wing sticking out from under the bed. Ares pulled out the god of death, brushed off the dust bunnies, and cut his bonds. Then both gods glared at Sisyphus.
Sisyphus backed into the corner. “Um, look, guys, I can explain—”
BOOM!
Ares and Thanatos vaporized him with a double blast of godly wrath.
Once Sisyphus’s soul found its way to the Underworld, Sisyphus somehow managed to get an audience with Hades himself.
The old man bowed before the god’s throne. “Lord Hades, I know I did a bad thing. I’m ready to face my punishment. But my wife! She didn’t do the proper funeral rites for me! How can I enjoy eternal damnation knowing that the missus didn’t honor the gods with sacrifices as you have commanded? Please, just allow me to return to the world long enough to scold my wife. I’ll come straight back.”
Hades frowned. Of course he was suspicious, but he’d always been under the impression that spirits couldn’t lie. (He was wrong.) Also, Sisyphus’s story filled him with outrage. Hades hated it when people didn’t take funeral rites seriously. And sacrifices to the gods? Those were even more important!
“Fine,” Hades said. “Go scold your wife, but don’t take too long. When you get back, I’ll have a special punishment ready for you.”
“I can’t wait!” Sisyphus said.
So his spirit returned to the world. He found his vaporized remains and somehow got them back together into a regular body. You can imagine his wife’s surprise when Sisyphus walked in the front door, alive as ever. “Honey, I’m home!”
After his wife woke up from fainting, Sisyphus told her the story of how he cleverly escaped death yet again.
His wife was not amused. “You can’t cheat Hades forever,” she warned. “You’re asking for trouble.”
“I’ve already been condemned to the Fields of Punishment,” Sisyphus said. “What do I have to lose? Besides, Hades is busy. He sees thousands of souls every day. He won’t even know I’m gone.”
For years, Sisyphus’s plan actually worked. He kept a low profile. He stayed at home most of the time, and when he had to go out, he wore a fake beard. Hades was busy. He forgot all about Sisyphus, until one day Thanatos happened to ask: “Hey, what’d you ever do to that creep who stuffed me under his bed?”
“Oh…” Hades frowned. “Whoops.”
This time, Hades sent the messenger god Hermes to look for Sisyphus. Hermes wore a helmet, so he couldn’t get whacked over the head so easily. The messenger god dragged Sisyphus back to the Underworld and threw him at the foot of Hades’s throne.
Hades smiled coldly. “Lie to me, will you? Oh, I have something very special for you!”
He took Sisyphus to the middle of the Fields of Punishment, to a barren hill five hundred feet high with sides that sloped at forty-five degrees, just perfect for skateboarding. At the bottom of the hill sat a big round boulder the size of a compact car.
“Here you are,” Hades said. “As soon as you manage to push this rock to the top of that hill, you can go. Your punishment will be over.”
Sisyphus sighed with relief. He’d been expecting much worse. Sure, the boulder looked heavy. Pushing it up the hill would suck, but at least it wouldn’t be impossible.
“Thank you, Lord Hades,” Sisyphus said. “You are merciful.”
“Right.” Hades’s dark eyes glinted. “Merciful.”
The god dis
appeared in a cloud of gloom, and Sisyphus got to work.
Unfortunately, he soon found out his job was impossible. Pushing the rock took every bit of his strength, and as soon as Sisyphus got close to the top of the hill, he lost control. No matter what he tried, the boulder would roll back to the bottom. Or it would run over him and then roll to the bottom.
If Sisyphus stopped to rest, one of the Furies came along and whipped him until he got moving again. Sisyphus was doomed to roll his rock uphill for eternity, never reaching the top.
Another happy ending! Ares, the god of war, got to watch people die again. Mrs. Sisyphus got some peace and quiet. And Thanatos, the god of death, decided not to ring anyone’s doorbell and require a signature anymore. From then on, he just sneaked around invisibly and took his victims’ souls without warning. So if you were planning on living forever by tying up the god of death and stuffing him under your bed, you’re out of luck.
So that’s how Hades got the Underworld organized. He built his dark palace on the edge of the Fields of Asphodel, and once he married Persephone, he more or less settled down and was about as happy as an Underworld god can be.
He started raising a herd of black cattle so that he could have fresh steak and milk, and he appointed a daimon named Menoetes to look after the cows. Hades also planted an orchard of magical pomegranate trees to honor his wife.
The Olympian gods rarely visited—except for Hermes, who had to deliver messages and souls—but if you happened to be in Hades’s throne room on any given day, you might find Thanatos hanging out, or the Furies, or the three dead-celebrity judges. The best deceased artists and musicians from Elysium were often summoned to the palace to entertain the king.
Were Persephone and Hades a happy couple? Hard to say. The old stories aren’t even clear about whether they had any children. Apparently Persephone had a daughter named Melinoe, who was the daimon in charge of ghosts and nightmares, but Hades may or may not have been the father. Some stories say the father was actually Zeus disguised as Hades, which gets us into a whole new level of gross.