Ade (Regno) – Wikipedia

Ade (in ancient Greek: Aid , Hados ) identifies the kingdom of Greek and Roman souls (also called Orc O Averno ). In reality, it is only a transposition of the name of the God: one wanted to identify the kingdom with his own king.

The kingdom of Greek/Latin dead was a real physical place, which could even be accessed on the ground from some impervious places, difficult to reach or in any case secret and inaccessible to mortals.

As for the geography and topography of the underworld, Homer (in the Odyssey ) does not give him a real character of “kingdom” extended, but describes it only as a dark and mysterious physical sphere, mostly precluded from the living, where the shadows (and not the souls) of men Good shadows and evil shadows, and without even a sentence of punishment or prize based on the earthly merits.

In the Greek tradition, one of the entrances to Hades was in the Cimmeri country, which was on the twilight border of the ocean, and precisely in this remote region Odysseus had to go to descend to the Hades and meet the shadow of the induction Tiresia ; In the Roman tradition, however, one of the infernal entrances was located near the Lake of the winter (which then became the name of the infernal kingdom itself), from which Enea descended together with the Cumana Sibyl. ^[first]

To access it, you had to overcome Cerbero first, then cross the Acheronte by pouring an offering to the terrible caronte and reach the three Minici Minici, Eaco and Radamanto who issued their verdict. In the Hades there were five rivers: Stige, Cocito, Acheronte, Flegetonte and Lette, the latter’s water had the characteristic of making those who drink it lose memory. It tells Plato, in “La Repubblica”, that the souls of the dead, now purified by sins, are transported by vortices of fire and resting on the ground. Here they choose their next life, and subsequently drink the water of the LEE river. It is said that Ulysses, having very suffered in the previous life for the burden of being king, chose a simple, agricultural life, which would never have caused annoyance. Agamemnon, tired for human distrust, decided to live translated into eagles.

The Hades, which welcomes the souls of all the deceased except the dead remained, is sometimes confused with one of his section, tartar, the place where the titans and giants are found, which in vain attempted to defeat the Olympos, Both those mortals punished for their serious misdeeds like Tantalo, Sisyphus, the Danaids; And this more than anything else on the basis of Christian iconography relating to hell. The souls of those who were neither evil nor extraordinarily virtuous in life are instead wandering on the asphodeli lawn, a beautiful but weakly illuminated place: the most noble souls, finally, access the very bright Elysis fields, or according to some authors, to the lucky islands , also called Blessed Islands. Virgil adds the fields of crying, reserved for suicide deaths and to those who were overwhelmed by passion in life, and a section that welcomes all the fallen in the war not evil and honorably buried.

The dead without tomb, however – was the fate of Icaro, Tarquito, Palinuro, Mimante, Oronte, Ennomo, Licaone, asteropeum, perhaps also Ippoloco, the son of Antimaco – wander without stopping outside the kingdom, according to some authors for Always, according to others percent years, provided that someone on earth does not honor their remains; If this happens, they can finally cross the threshold of ADE (it was what happened to Polidoro, son of Priam and Ecuba, whose body at first had been buried only partially) and being able to be able to, like all the others Deceived, to scrutinize what happens among the living, and future events (according to Homer, however, no spirit has this power, except for the guy Tiresia).

• Stamatia dova, Greek Heroes in and out of Hades , Lanham, Lexington Books, 2012.
• Albert Henrichs, “Hades”, in Simon Hornblower, Anthony S. Spawforth, Ester Eidinow (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary , quarta ed., Oxford, Oxford University Press 2012, pp. 640-641.
• Leronard Prestige, Hades in the Greek Fathers , “The Journal of Theological Studies”, XXIV, 96, 1923, pp. 476-485,