2
The general herd, whom philosophers call the laity, trust Homer and Hesiod and the other mythmakers in these matters, and take their poetry for a law unto themselves. So they suppose that there is a place deep under the earth called Hades, which is large and roomy and murky and sunless; I don’t know how they imagine it to be lighted up so that everything in it can be seen. The king of the abyss is a brother of Zeus named Pluto, who has been honoured with that appellative, so I was told by one well versed in such matters, because of his wealth of corpses.The Greeks derived the name Ploutdn (Pluto) from ploutein (to be rich), and generally held that it was given to Hades because he owned and dispensed the riches that are in the earth. So Lucian in the Timon(21). Here, however, we have in substance the view of Cornutus (5): “He was called Pluto because, of all that is perishable, there is nothing which does not at last go down to him and become his property.” This Pluto, they say, has organized his state and the world below as follows. He himself has been allotted the sovereignty of the dead, whom he receives, takes in charge, and retains in close custody, permitting nobody whatsoever to go back up above, except, in all time, a very few for most important reasons.
3
His country is surrounded by great rivers, fearful even in name; for they are called “Wailing,” “Burning Fire,’ and the like. But the principal feature is Lake Acheron, which lies in front and first receives visitors; it cannot be crossed or passed without the ferryman, for it is too deep to ford afoot and too broad to swim across—indeed, even dead birds cannot fly across it!Many places on earth, men thought, exhaled vapours so deadly that birds, attempting to cross them, fell dead; the most famous of these “Plutonia” was the lake near Cumae, called “Aopyos par excellence, whence Avernus. Iflive birds could not fly across Avernus, surely the ghost of a bird could not fly across Acheron.
