Original subtitles

(upbeat orchestral music)

- [Narrator] A terrifying river which reeks of death.

It flows towards the abyss.

The water is black.

The sun's rays never shine on it.

The Styx.

Such is the name of this damned river.

It crosses magmas of molten rock and metal.

Slowly it converges on a vast swamp

at the center of the underworld.

On its banks an indistinct crowd, shadows,

those who were just a few minutes earlier still alive.

Suddenly a dilapidated boat surges out of this limbo.

A standing figure observes the shadows.

He is an an old man, ugly, bearded, dressed in rags.

His name, Charon.

His task, to ferry the shadows across the Styx

to the land of the dead.

But there is a condition to be met by each of these shadows.

They must pay Charon an obol for their passage.

The friends of the deceased who know this requirement

have buried their dead with a coin under their tongue.

This will pay the fearful Charon.

Those who cannot pay

are doomed to wait eternally on the bank.

(ominous music)

Charon beckons a group forward.

He checks that all are present.

He seats the shadows in his boat and orders them to row.

He takes the tiller.

The vessel cuts slowly through the marshy waters.

Mournful noises pierce the darkness.

A hub-bub of clanking chains, of moans,

of sobs can be heard.

In the distance sinister plains can be seen

where the souls of heroes wander aimlessly

through the crowds of the dead.

Their only pleasure are the libations of blood

that the living give them.

When they drink they feel almost like men again.

The boat has docked.

Charon abandons his passengers to their fate and leaves.

Suddenly, a creature appears before the shadows, a dog,

a huge three-headed dog.

His eyes are like burning coals.

His coat like bristling spears.

Cerberus, the terrifying Cerberus,

is there to guard the gates of the underworld.

His ferocious barking fills the dead with vain terror.

(upbeat orchestral music)

Cerberus is perfidious, flattering those who approach him,

drawing them to him

by the movement of his tail and his ears.

But once over the threshold of his master's palace,

Cerberus never let's them out again,

and he devours whosoever tries to escape.

It is over this world from which none can escape

that the lord of the dead reigns, Hades.

Hades, son of Rhea and of Cronus, brother of Zeus.

Hades, the god who isn't named.

The fear that he awakens is so great

that rather than speak his name,

he is referred to by all sorts of nicknames:

the Receiver of Many, the Illustrious,

the Giver of Good Counsel,

or even the Zeus of the Underworld.

This kingdom of the dead was not wanted by Hades,

not for a moment.

It was allotted to him when Zeus took power

and decided to share the universe with his brothers.

Zeus, giving honor where honor was due,

took the world of men and the celestial world for himself,

gave Poseidon the sea world,

and to Hades accorded the underworld.

(upbeat orchestral music)

This dwelling is regarded with horror even by the gods.

As with all kings worth their salt,

Hades holds a scepter in his hand

with which he mercilessly governs the souls of the dead.

Here, in the bowels of the underworld,

surrounded by frowning divinities,

his servants, his messengers,

Hades decrees his laws over the people of shadows,

laws as simple as they are inflexible.

Once the shadows are judged

they're directed to one of three paths

which snake through the underworld.

The first one leads to the Asphodel Meadows

where the vast majority of imperfect souls reside,

neither good, nor bad, pale reflections of the living.

The second path leads down to Tartarus,

the deepest part of the underground abyss.

This is where the worst criminals are found,

the Titans and the Giants, the Hecatoncheires,

all those mortals or gods who dared defy Zeus.

And lastly, a small minority take the third path

which leads to the Elysian Fields,

a sort of paradise where eternal springtime reigns.

No more pain.

No more old age.

A gentle breeze is felt

only as it spreads the smell of flowers.

Fragrant hedgerows shade the fortunate dead.

But in fact, even here, the dead hanker after life.

(mellow orchestral music)

Hades is a rich god.

He is surrounded by precious stones and rare metals,

gold, diamonds, rubies,

but he possesses nothing on the earth's surface.

The mortals build no temples to him there,

dedicate no alters to him,

and his rare worshipers only meet at night

where in joyless, sinister ceremonies

they sacrifice pairs of black animals,

their heads turned to the ground.

(upbeat orchestral music)

Hades is alone.

No one could stand living in this universe

surrounded by murmurs which pierce the sinister darkness.

No one, in any case, not of their own free will.

And then of course Hades knows nothing of what goes on

in the upper world or on Mount Olympus.

He hardly ever goes there.

The only news which he receives of the world

is contained in the oaths and curses which mortals utter

as they strike the ground with their hands.

So Hades reigns in isolation,

but he sometimes feels the need to leave his infernal palace

to personally attend to business,

or just to breathe the outside air.

One fine day, having just left the depths of his kingdom,

Hades drives his chariot,

pulled by splendid night-colored horses,

across a Sicilian plain, not far from Mount Etna.

He's indifferent to the sun's rays, to the cloudless sky,

to the beautiful landscape.

He rides.

He crosses the plains, the forest and the valleys of Greece.

Suddenly a silhouette draws his attention.

He brings his team of horses to an abrupt halt.

(ethereal orchestral music)

There, a few steps away, a young girl of exceptional beauty

is picking flowers.

Her name is Persephone,

a name which signifies bringer of destruction.

And this young girl is not just anybody.

She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter,

the goddess of agriculture and harvests.

On Mount Olympus, where she is sometimes allowed to go,

she is known as Kore, which simple means the young girl,

the maiden.

It is love at first sight.

Hades' heart goes wild.

(joyful orchestral music)

He could kidnap the young girl,

carry her off to his kingdom, but that wouldn't be right.

After all, is she not his brother's daughter?

Hades might well be the Prince of Darkness,

but family is family, and he respects the law.

So Hades sets off for Olympus.

He goes to see Zeus.

Before his royal brother, he asks for Persephone's hand.

This is a hugely embarrassing request

for the King of the Gods.

If he refuses he offends his brother.

If he accepts, Demeter will never forgive him.

Zeus considers.

He is completely at a lost.

He dare not take sides,

so he ducks the question.

I can neither give nor refuse my consent,

he tells his brother.

Armed with this equivocal reply,

Hades considers himself free of all constraints.

He climbs back onto his chariot

and takes the road back to Sicily and the Plain of Etna.

(thrilling orchestral music)

Persephone is there still in the company of nymphs.

So Hades dons his cap of invisibility and disappears.

A few moments later, as Persephone bends to pick a flower,

the ground abruptly opens beneath her feet.

Pulled by its night-colored horses,

the chariot of the King of Shadows

springs from the gaping hole.

One hand still on the reigns,

Hades grabs Persephone around the waist, lifts her,

and carries her off into the pit of the dead and the night.

(calm orchestral music)

When her daughter doesn't return,

the Goddess Demeter, overcome with worry,

goes to look for her.

She questions all those she meets,

but none dares tell her the truth,

not the men, nor the gods, nor the nymphs, nor the birds,

no one,

until at last an old woman approaches her.

It is the Goddess Hecate.

Hecate is a goddess with double powers.

She is both goddess of fertility and goddess of the moon.

When the moon is full, lighting the night sky

and making men and beasts mad, it is said

that Hecate points out the path to the underworld.

This goddess stands at the crossroads between good and evil,

between fertility and drought.

One day she is the helper of humanity,

the next the harbinger of imminent death.

Hecate is the only divinity who sometimes,

of her own free will, goes down to see Hades at home.

And so here is Hecate coming towards Demeter.

The other morning

she heard the voice of Persephone calling for help,

but when she got there there was no one to be found.

(ominous music)

Demeter, without pausing for breath,

for nine days and nine nights continues her search.

She hunts through the woods and the forests,

scours the lakes and the mountains,

the hills and the valleys, all in vain.

Finally, when all hope seems lost,

Hecate takes her to see Helios, the god of the sun,

who sees everything.

And Helios decides to name the guilty party,

Hades.

Hades, the master of the underworld.

Demeter demands the return of her daughter.

Hades refuses.

In that case, announces Demeter to the Assembly of Gods,

I leave Olympus never to return,

and the earth will be sterile

until my daughter is returned to me.

This is no empty threat.

Demeter has the means of putting her words into practice.

She is the goddess of wheat, the goddess of nourishment.

The following day the crops start to fail,

fruit begins to rot,

and famine looks set to ravage the earth.

The human race is threatened with extinction.

In his palace, implored from all quarters,

Zeus is at a lost to know what to do.

He sends Demeter his messenger, the Goddess Iris,

to beg her to see reason.

Demeter will hear nothing of it.

A delegation of gods and goddesses from Olympus,

laden with gifts, goes to plead with her without success.

So Zeus with no choice left to him sends his son Hermes

to see his brother Hades with the following message,

if you do not give back Persephone we are all lost.

Mankind will die and there will be no one left to honor us,

no one left to believe in us.

Hades considers and he accepts.

Yes, he accepts.

He is willing to give Persephone back to her mother,

but on one condition,

the laws of the gods must be respected.

Did he himself not respect Zeus' word

when he made his request?

And there is a law here in the underworld

which everyone is aware of, and which none may violate:

whosoever has consumed the food of the dead

will remain beneath the earth for eternity.

Hermes questions Persephone.

Did she taste any food?

Persephone assures him, hand on heart,

that she has been so unhappy since her kidnap

that she has eaten nothing.

Hades therefore reluctantly accepts

that she return to her mother's side.

But just as Hermes is helping the young girl

onto his chariot, a voice rings out.

It is Ascalaphus,

one of the gardeners of the Lord of Darkness.

She's lying, he declares.

Specifying that he saw Persephone pick a pomegranate,

and eat seven grains from it.

He is willing to bear witness to it.

As Ascalaphus is to regret these words later

when Demeter turns him into an owl.

For the moment, in any case,

this revelation changes everything.

If Persephone has tasted the food of the underworld

then she must remain there.

It's the law, and even Zeus must respect it.

When she learns the news, Demeter sadder than ever,

shuts herself away all alone.

She refuses to return to Olympus

and determines to carry on starving mankind.

Exasperated, Zeus paces around, sleeplessly cogitating,

and all the while famine continues to spread

and reek havoc amongst mortals.

Zeus explains the problem to Rhea, his mother,

for Rhea is also the mother of Hades and of Demeter.

And it is Rhea who will, once again,

preside over the negotiations

between her three children, Zeus, Demeter, and Hades.

There is discussion.

There is debate.

There are tears and, at last, agreement is come to.

Persephone, because she has tasted the food of the dead,

will spend her winters in the underworld

and the rest of the year she will be in the fresh air

with Demeter.

(peaceful orchestral music)

And that is why during the months

that mother and daughter are separated the earth freezes,

nothing grows or flowers.

That is Demeter who, separated from her daughter,

shuns Olympus and refuses to feed mankind.

Nature is waiting for Persephone to return.

And that is how Persephone, the gentle young girl

who liked to pick flowers beneath the Sicilian sun,

became the queen of the underworld.

(mysterious music)

Contrary to all expectations,

the couple formed by Hades and Persephone is a happy one.

Persephone takes her role as queen very seriously

and her role as wife equally.

Her presence brings about a new image of life and death,

since the young woman shares her time

between the two worlds, the lower one and the upper one.

But this marriage doesn't improve the reputation

of the lord of the underworld.

Who is Hades really?

It would be wrong to reduce him to just the god of death.

He isn't exactly death.

Death is another god, Thanatos.

Contrary to what is usually believed,

Hades is neither satanic nor evil doing.

It is not he who torments his subjects.

That is the the Erinyes, the goddesses of vengeance

who are a law unto themselves.

Look at them, crowned with snakes, armed with whips.

It is they, the Erinyes,

who relentlessly persecute their victims,

going so far as to make them mad.

Hades has nothing to do with that.

He governs the underground world.

He reigns over this kingdom which he never wanted,

but which was allotted to him against his will.

He is surrounded by monstrous creatures

with precise functions.

Out of duty he pretends to be pitiless,

but in his heart he is also wise, sometimes tender.

He is capable of showing certain indulgence

if approached in the right way.

As proof, we have this man who has just knocked at his door,

a visitor come of his own free will,

and before death has come to reap him.

His name is Orpheus, a warrior,

but also the most famous poet and musician of all times.

With no weapon, no violence,

it is with his lyre and his voice

that Orpheus has managed to fight his way through

to the infernal couple.

Orpheus, after a life of adventures and exploits,

met Eurydice, an nymph of incomparable grace.

Struck to the heart, Orpheus was overcome

by an immeasurable passion for her, and he married her.

But their happiness did not last long.

Eurydice died.

(mellow music)

(dust blowing)

Orpheus, mad with grief, unable to resign himself

to the loss of his loved one,

dared to do what no other mortal had dared to do before him,

descend into the underworld.

So, now here he is.

He asks the infernal couple for the return of his love.

Hades is speechless.

Persephone is too.

They seem poised to punish such impudence,

but Orpheus stops them with an imploring gesture.

Striking a sensitive chord, as one might say,

he reminds Hades

of the feelings he experienced towards Persephone,

the flight of love that he succumbed to,

his desperation and sadness

when the one who he made the queen of the underworld

is kept far from his side.

Softened by these celestial notes

and the poetical musician's words,

Hades and Persephone give in to his prayers

on condition, once again,

that the laws of the underworld be respected.

Orpheus can leave, Eurydice will follow him,

and he must never turn around,

not before reaching the surface.

If he disobeys, then Eurydice will be lost to him forever.

Hades and Persephone will be able to do no more for him.

The destiny of Eurydice now lies in his hands alone.

This decision sheds light on the multiple facets

of the personality of the master of the underworld.

He is music loving, sensitive to lovers' laments,

and capable of being moved by beauty.

But whatever he does, in the eyes of mortals,

Hades will always be this feared and detested god,

the master of the underworld.

When in truth, he is both life and death,

two faces of a blank page.

Certain evenings Hades perhaps says to himself

with sadness that today mortals are very wrong to fear him,

because real death, the unique death,

as the Greeks well knew, is not the underworld,

it is being forgotten.

(upbeat orchestral music)