Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: This is the land of the dead,

and this is its master.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades, a god so feared no one would speak his name.

His myth reveals how the ancient Greeks viewed death.

It is a chilling vision of the one fate no mortal can escape,

and it has eerie links to the real ancient world, curses,

ghosts, and secret cults.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Prepare to descend into the underworld

and experience the story as the ancients heard it.

This is the truth behind the myth of Hades.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In a lush green pasture, a beautiful young woman

picks flowers.

Her name is Persephone and she is being watched.

RENAUD GAGNE: In Greek mythology, when a young maiden

is plucking flowers in the meadow,

something bad is about to happen.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[RUMBLING]

NARRATOR: Suddenly, the ground breaks open.

An unseen hand reaches up from the darkness

and drags her down into the underworld.

[SCREAMS]

Hades, god of the dead, has chosen his queen.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades is mythology's warden of death.

He commands the vast and frightening realm

that all mortals, good and bad, must enter when they die.

It is his job to make sure they never escape.

DAVID GEORGE: He is the god of the dead, and none of us

want to die.

He is to be feared.

His power is awesome.

NARRATOR: The Greeks wanted nothing

to do with Hades because to know him is to be dead.

PETER STRUCK: The Greeks tended not to depict or represent

Hades.

There are not temples built to him.

He's someone that has kept at arm's length

like a kind of uncle who is business you're not sure about

and don't want to talk about too much.

The main idea is that for the ancient Greeks to be dead

is not a very good thing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The myth of Hades was created to make sense of what

happens after we die.

DAVID GEORGE: These stories reflect human yearning

to hold on.

We can see in them how the Greeks thought about death,

what their hopes and fears were about death.

A lot of religious traditions try and supply

a way in which your existence can continue in the next world,

and Greek religious traditions are no different.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: According to the myth, dead souls

enter a vast and gloomy underworld.

A realm named after its master, Hades.

It is the ancient Greek equivalent of Heaven, Hell,

and Limbo, all under one roof.

KRISTINA MILNOR: We in a Christian context,

think that what happens to you after death has to do with what

you've done here on Earth.

If you've been a good person, then you go to Heaven.

If you've been a bad person, you go to Hell.

For the Greeks, actually, those places

were all located in one place.

They were all the underworld.

SARAH JOHNSTON: It's the one place we can't ever see.

We can make up stories about what might be going on there,

the great punishments that are occurring

or the terrible things that might be happening,

but we never know.

And so, we continue to wonder.

NARRATOR: In the myth, there are three levels of Hades.

Most of the dead descend to the fields

of Asphodel, the dreary resting place of the nameless masses.

PETER STRUCK: The fate of the average person

in the underworld is just to have to wander around

a gray shade and live not very exciting or interesting life.

It's a kind of sad place to be.

With sort of like the-- the Catholic conception of Limbo,

a sort of twilight place, quiet and peaceful,

but full of mourning trees, where the soul would simply

wandering aimlessly.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: And then, there is the place reserved for those who've

most offended the gods.

[GROWLS]

A vast abyss 40,000 miles deep.

A dungeon of suffering and eternal torment

surrounded by a flaming river.

This is Tartarus.

KRISTINA MILNOR: The souls of very bad people

would be sent to Tartarus, which is quite like our--

the Christian conception of Hell.

NARRATOR: In fact, Tartarus was so closely linked with Hell

by the early Christians that it was even mentioned in the New

Testament.

DENNIS MACDONALD: It appears in a verbal form

in 2 Peter having to do with people being thrown

into Tartarus.

And then, there were a few who were terribly wicked who

were punished in Tartarus.

And that I think is the origin of what Christians

know as Hell.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: For the fortunate few, paradise

awaits in the third realm of Hades,

the Islands of the Blessed, the ancient Greek equivalent

of Heaven.

RENAUD GAGNE: Everything grows by itself

and you can eat your fill with no work.

There is absolutely no work.

There is constant rejoicing.

There around dances, there are streams,

and there is pure friendship.

KRISTINA MILNOR: That was where famous and glorious people

would spend the rest of their lives.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: In the myth, all human beings must eventually

succumb to Hades command.

For some, that day comes far too soon.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades has kidnapped a young maiden name Persephone.

He holds her captive in the underworld.

PETER STRUCK: Hades has taken her away to his realm

to be his wife forever.

NARRATOR: But Persephone is not forgotten.

In the world above, her powerful mother is searching for her.

She is Demeter, goddess of the harvest.

The woman who feeds the world.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

RENAUD GAGNE: This is one myth that

defines one of the most central aspects of the universe.

Demeter is able to destroy humankind.

She can rip the world apart.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The ancient Greeks believed

Demeter was responsible for the changing of the seasons,

and that Persephone's disappearance started

the cycle.

KRISTINA MILNOR: She didn't know what

had happened to her daughter, so she wandered the Earth.

And in her grief, at the loss of her daughter,

she forgot to give fertility to the land.

So plants withered and died, human beings no longer

gave birth, the Earth descended into the deepest, deepest

of winters.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Faced with the prospect of an endless frost,

the other gods command Hades to return Persephone.

But Hades has a plan.

DAVID GEORGE: Hades knew that if he could get her to eat food

belonging to the underneath, that she would then become part

of the underneath.

NARRATOR: He offers Persephone a snack of pomegranate seeds.

She naively accepts and seals her fate.

It is a mistake for which the entire planet will pay.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

She must now spend three months of every year

in the underworld, one month for every seed she ate.

The rest of the year, she can spend with her mother.

KRISTINA MILNOR: When Persephone is down in the underworld,

Demeter doesn't give Earth the fertility that it needs,

and that is what the Greeks understood as winter.

When Persephone returns to her mother,

Demeter rejoices, and that's what

we have as spring and summer.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The ancient Greeks believed Persephone had

traveled to and from the underworld with each change

of seasons.

But how did she get there?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The answer lies in a cave near the Greek town of Eleusis

just northwest of Athens.

To the ancients, this wasn't just a cave.

It was a portal of death.

MICHAEL COSMOPOULOS: According to the myth,

Demeter met with her daughter, Persephone, right here.

Persephone came out from the underworld through this cave.

NARRATOR: A boundary between the land of the living

and the land of the dead and between real life and myth.

But this wasn't the only passage into Hades.

SARAH JOHNSTON: There were lots of entrances

to the underworld in ancient Greece.

In fact, it was sort of a competing industry.

It was a little bit like the way that Americans used to say

George Washington slept here.

Every locale wanted to be able to say we have an entrance

to the underworld.

NARRATOR: This was a place of great importance

to the ancient Greeks.

In fact, experts determined that the ruins found

near the cave entrance were the remains of a temple.

Among the artifacts discovered there was a stone relief

with an inscription reading simply,

"To the god and goddess".

It was a dedication to a god who couldn't be called by name,

a shrine to the angel of death himself, Hades.

DAVID GEORGE: You need to remember that temples to Hades

are not come.

Because of who he is and what his worship is,

there are many reasons to build temples.

In fact, the way you would get his attention

is you would smash on the ground and say, hey, Hades.

So the fact that there's a temple like Eleusis

is just striking.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: It was here at Eleusis that ancient Greece's largest

religious cult met to worship.

A secret society obsessed with death.

DAVID GEORGE: We know historical personages

who would go there and stay and go through the initiation.

Plato, Cicero, Socrates, that tells you the importance of it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Surviving texts reveal that the cult members came here

in search of a shortcut to paradise, a path

to eternal bliss in the realm of Hades.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PETER STRUCK: Cults would give you

the information you needed to find your way to the Islands

of the Blessed.

You lived it out in relative splendor with great abundance

of food, and parties, and wine.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Experts believe the cult at Eleusis

may have influenced another religion that promises life

after death, Christianity.

MICHAEL COSMOPOULOS: We know that the cult helped

to liberate people from the fear of death

and very interesting preparing the ground for Christianity.

It's sowed the seeds of a universal cult that revolved

around the defeat of death.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: To the ancient Greeks, this was the face of death.

In the myth, Hades is a merciless master of souls.

But he was not always this way.

He has undergone a dramatic transformation

from forgotten child to feared god.

In fact, he was cursed from the moment of birth

when he was eaten alive by his own father.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades is the ancient Greek god of the underworld.

A dark Lord who controls all dead souls.

But he wasn't always so menacing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[BABY CRYING]

In the palace of the gods, a baby's cries

pierced the silence.

A newborn son.

His name is Hades.

His father is Cronus, the King of Greece's ruling gods,

The Titans.

Cronus was told in a prophecy that one of his children

would murder him and he is determined to make sure

that doesn't happen.

The father fears being replaced by the son.

That's human psychology.

Cronus's solution to the problem was eat your kids.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[INAUDIBLE]

NARRATOR: In one swift motion, Cronus

consumes his newborn son.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KRISTINA MILNOR: Infanticide wasn't really

common in ancient Greece.

So the idea of a father actually deliberately trying

to kill his children would have been very shocking to them.

PETER STRUCK: Now, of course, since they're immortal,

the children that Cronus swallows are not dead.

They are just locked away inside of his belly.

NARRATOR: Hades and most of his siblings

grow up inside their father's stomach.

But one child was able to escape Cronus's wrath.

His name is Zeus.

[LIGHTNING STRIKES]

He returns as a grown god and frees his trapped brothers

and sisters.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The siblings now unite to form the Olympians

and seize control of the universe from their parents

in a final clash with the Titans.

[GROWLS]

[LIGHTNING STRIKING]

PETER STRUCK: After the overthrow of the Titans,

the Olympians have the job of trying to figure out now who

does what in this new order.

NARRATOR: Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, the three male Olympians,

agree to divide the spoils of conquest.

It is a defining moment for Hades,

one that will forever determine the power

structure of the gods.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades is the oldest child.

And according to the real Greek law of the time,

that gives him an advantage.

DAVID GEORGE: Throughout most of the Greek world,

the law of primogeniture was the practice, which

means the oldest born, who should be Hades,

should have by right inherited the largest share.

[LIGHTNING STRIKES]

NARRATOR: But Zeus, the youngest brother,

has his own ambitions to rule the world.

It is a clash between Zeus's ambition and Hades birthright.

The brothers decide to draw lots.

Whoever wins the heavens will become the king of the gods.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In ancient Greek custom, the drawing of lots

was a typical procedure used to divide things up

that were otherwise very difficult to discern.

And everybody would have recognized

that the drawing of lots was a legitimate way

to make a tough call like this.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The gods draw.

Poseidon claims the seas.

Zeus claims the heavens, thus becoming

mythology's supreme commander.

And Hades draws the short straw.

He is left with the land of the dead.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID GEORGE: This was not something he chose for himself.

It was fated him.

He did it.

But it bent him in some ways.

It made him not a happy god.

NARRATOR: It is a tragic turning point for Hades.

He could have ruled the universe.

Instead, he is condemned to the realm of the dead.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

IOANNIS MYLONOPOULOS: In ancient Greece,

the attitudes towards death was not

so different to our feelings today towards death.

So people would not worship Hades as much

as they did Poseidon and Zeus.

Other gods do not come to see him because death

is hateful to the gods.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Hades new home is dark, bleak, and filled

with the sadness of dead soldiers.

[GROWLS]

Ancient texts describe it as a dank expanse

of caves and rivers.

DAVID GEORGE: It is a place that is dark and gloomy.

Its rivers are full of mist.

It has the stench of decay.

It's a very forbidding place.

It's a place where if you go, you do not come back from.

NARRATOR: So goes the myth, but could it be based on reality?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is Diros, a network of caves that

runs for miles beneath Greece.

It's a maze of rivers and caverns

match the ancient descriptions of Hades perfectly.

SARAH JOHNSTON: Caves functioned as in between spaces.

They were clearly understood to be potential points

of transition between the upper world and the underworld.

DAVID GEORGE: Caves are exceedingly

important throughout the Greek world

because the first humans who lived there, lived in caves.

Even after they move out and start building and practicing

agriculture, these caves retain their sacred significance.

IOANNIS MYLONOPOULOS: The experience

of entering and being in such a gloomy place

definitely affected the imagination of Greeks

and their construction of what's Hades in the underworld

must have looked like.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[GROWLING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: The ancient Greeks were terrified

of Hades and his morbid realm.

But they were even more afraid of the dead souls

who were denied access to it.

According to the myth, these rejected spirits would return

to haunt the living, ghosts.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

According to Greek myth, the god, Hades,

rules are dark and dark universe--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[YELLS]

The underworld of the dead.

DAVID GEORGE: It begins to metamorphosis the afterlife

into a kingdom.

And the function of any just monarch is to punish the wicked

and to reward the good.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Hades assembles a gang of enforcers

to watch over his dead souls--

[GROWLS]

Cerberus, a ferocious three headed guard dog, the 100

handers, prison guards of Tartarus,

and the principal henchmen of Hades, Charon.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

He patrols the River Styx, the waterway of hate.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PETER STRUCK: Charon has a job of ferrying souls

from one side of the world, that is the world of the living,

to the other side of the River Styx, which

is the world of the underworld proper

or the world of the dead.

DAVID GEORGE: He's a skeletal figure, very demonic

and shadowy.

He in essence is the border between life and death.

He's decay.

In terms of popular culture, he comes down as the grim reaper.

He comes down as the one who will point his finger

and take you.

NARRATOR: There is no way into Hades except through Charon.

And no one can cross the river Styx for free.

Every dead soul must offer a coin for passage.

KRISTINA MILNOR: If the soul doesn't have that money

to pay the ferryman, it wanders forever unable to rest

on the shore of the Styx.

This is why ancient Greeks would place a coin

either under the tongue or on the eyelids of the corpse

of the dead person.

NARRATOR: This ritual was essential

to the ancient Greeks.

If the coin wasn't placed, the deceased

would never find peace.

DAVID GEORGE: There is no doubt that the ancients took this

seriously.

Many states had laws that punished people who did not

fulfill their duty to bury the dead.

The family had obligations to make sure that the dead were

cut off from this world and sent to the next

because if they didn't, the dead would be ghosts in this world.

And that affected everyone.

RENAUD GAGNE: The dead could come back

to haunt, ask for something, cry, complain, hurt, destroy.

All of these ideas are found from the earliest sources

we have until now.

NARRATOR: This is the myth, but what is the evidence.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The Greeks left behind a clue about their belief

in ghosts, ancient voodoo dolls.

Archaeologists excavating graves in Greece

have discovered the tiny lead figurines with their hands

and feet bound together.

And they are all enclosed in small coffins etched

with curses.

SARAH JOHNSTON: Inscribed on these

are magical spells that are intended to call up

the dead and the gods in charge of the dead

to basically torture people who are still living.

If you were competing in a boxing match,

you might ask the dead to restrain

the arm of your opponent.

Another realm in which they were frequently used is business.

So if you are a leather tanner and the other leather Tanner.

Down the street is doing better business,

you ask the dad to somehow screw up his business.

NARRATOR: These voodoo dolls were

placed in the graves of those who most likely never made it

to Hades.

They were known as the restless dead.

SARAH JOHNSTON: People who had died too young,

people who had died violently, for example, by being murdered,

or people who had not received proper burial.

These ghosts could not get into the underworld.

And so, these ghosts were restless,

and unhappy, and angry.

And it would be easier to get one of them

to do something nasty for you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Those souls who did make it into the underworld

were locked away for good.

Hades punishment for any who tried to leave

would be relentless.

But that didn't stop some from trying.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

An old, weakened man stands wearily

at the bottom of a mountain.

Sweat streams down his face.

Veins explode from his skin.

His name is Sisyphus and he is the first soul who ever dared

to defy the will of Hades.

Just before his life on Earth ended,

Sisyphus made plans to cheat death.

PETER STRUCK: Sisyphus says to his wife,

please, don't bury me.

He knows that if his wife doesn't bury him,

he won't go all the way through to the other side of Hades.

He'll be stuck in this kind of no man's land.

RENAUD GAGNE: Who has not imagined tricking death?

Sisyphus through his rhetorical art, through his intelligence,

through his sheer wit he is able to convince the god of death

or to find a way out of Hell.

NARRATOR: Sisyphus knew better than to try

deceiving the king of the dead.

Instead, he went to the queen.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KRISTINA MILNOR: Sisyphus complained to Persephone,

the queen of the underworld, that his wife had

done this terrible thing.

How could she possibly have treated his body

in such a terrible way.

Persephone felt sympathetic and felt angry with the wife,

and gave Sisyphus permission to go back up

to the world above in order to scold his wife.

Of course, once Sisyphus is back in the world above,

he has no intention of returning to Hades.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Sisyphus has done the impossible.

He has tricked death and turned the natural cycle of life

on its head.

But the lord of the underworld will have his revenge.

No one cheats Hades and lives to tell about it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Hades, the god of the dead, releases no one.

But a soul named Sisyphus has slipped through his grasp.

When Hades finds out he has been deceived, he is furious.

He immediately drags Sisyphus back to the underworld.

DAVID GEORGE: Sisyphus thought that he could outwit the gods,

that he could outwit death, that he could outwit nature.

NARRATOR: To the ancient Greeks, such an attitude was dangerous.

Any soul who tried to cheat death was a threat to society.

DAVID GEORGE: Greeks believe that when someone died,

they needed to be put in their place and kept there.

The assumption there was that the dead were seeking life

from the living and draining them of life.

If the dead were always present, they'd suck your life out.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: In the myth, the punishment

for trying to cheat death is painful and permanent.

Hades condemns Sisyphus to the Hell of the ancient world,

Tartarus.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There in the scorching heat, he is

forced to push a huge boulder up a mountain.

At the end of each day, he reaches the top exhausted,

and in agony, and watches helpless as his boulder

rolls back down.

He suffers the same punishment every day for eternity.

PETER STRUCK: From the story of Sisyphus in which we have

a person who's engaged in an absolutely pointless endeavor

for eternity, we get the modern English word of Sisyphean,

which describes some kind of a task that seems very arduous

and also entirely pointless.

NARRATOR: The story of Sisyphus sent a strong message

to the ancient Greeks, that no one

can outwit death or its master.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

PETER STRUCK: Hades is the one that humans most try to trick,

or deceive, or get around.

And we can understand this.

Hades is that god whose will over you

and whose power over you is absolute.

No one can negotiate their way out of death.

NARRATOR: But even after Sisyphus, there

are still those who try.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[GROWLS]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of them is Orpheus, a musician

who makes the sweetest music in the world.

It will become his weapon against the lord of the dead.

KRISTINA MILNOR: Orpheus was the founder

of the musical tradition.

He was the person who invented poetry and invented music.

He was particularly adept with the lyre, which

was an ancient musical instrument,

a stringed instrument shaped sort of like a U

with a bar across the top and strings coming down.

DAVID GEORGE: One of the important things

you need to remember about the word music in Greek, [GREEK]..

It means both song, but it also means magical incantation.

So Orpheus engaged in magic when he sung.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: There is only one thing

Orpheus loves more than music, his stunning young bride,

Eurydice.

DAVID GEORGE: One of the profoundly sad things

about the Orpheus and Eurydice story

is just how perfectly happy and in love they were.

And one of the things about the Greeks is that if you're happy,

something's going to happen because it doesn't belong

to mortals to be that happy.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: One day as Eurydice picks fruit

in a grove she's spotted by a satyr, a hideous half-goat,

half-man beast known for its uncontrollable sex drive.

DAVID GEORGE: Satyrs represented the male force

of nature uncontrolled.

It was pure appetite.

It was a desire to procreate and mate.

NARRATOR: The satyr lunges for Eurydice.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

She tries to escape.

But the satyr corners her.

She backs away terrified and slips

into a pit of poisonous vipers.

[HISSING]

[GROWLS]

This is where Orpheus finds her, but he is too late.

She is in the clutches of Hades.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KRISTINA MILNOR: Orpheus is so in love with Eurydice

that he grieves her as no human being has ever grieved anyone.

NARRATOR: Orpheus refuses to accept his wife's death.

He resolves to challenge Hades and bring back his wife alive.

RENAUD GAGNE: Life cannot possibly go on without

Eurydice.

With his lyre as an only weapon, he

resolves to go down to the underworld.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Orpheus begins a treacherous descent

into the depths of the Earth.

Failure in his quest will doom his wife forever.

Success will make him a hero.

SARAH JOHNSTON: It's almost as if you can't be a truly

Greek hero unless you have been to the underworld and back.

It is a very frequent theme in Greek literature.

It was something they like to think about.

Death is something that everyone shares.

We can't help but think about it.

[LYRE PLAYING]

NARRATOR: With his beautiful and sad songs,

Orpheus charms his way past the boatman, Charon,

and across the River Styx.

[GROWLS]

But another terrifying obstacle awaits him

on the other side, Cerberus, the three

headed guard dog of Hades.

[GROWLS]

PETER STRUCK: Cerberus was stationed

at the gates of the underworld.

He was there to monitor those who came in and out.

No one could get in or out without going past this dog.

DAVID GEORGE: This ferocious dog had three heads,

and was big, much bigger than other dogs and much stronger

than other dogs.

It's a beast that they see and tremble before.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: With trembling fingers,

Orpheus strums his lyre.

Cerberus is spellbound and the musician has his opening.

But his true test is inside the gates, Hades himself.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID GEORGE: He's going up to the great god Hades,

and just hoping that his command of music will make Hades

do what he wants.

But his faith, his confidence is not in him as the musician

but in the power of music.

NARRATOR: Orpheus will attempt to do what no mortal ever has,

to enchant the lord of the dead.

[LYRE PLAYING]

KRISTINA MILNOR: His song was so beautiful and so grief stricken

that everyone, including Hades, wept.

And this is the god of the dead, he doesn't weep easily.

NARRATOR: Another figure watches from the shadows,

Orpheus's dead wife, Eurydice.

[LYRE PLAYING]

Hades is so moved by the music he decides to give Orpheus

a chance to win his wife's freedom.

DAVID GEORGE: Hades recognizes the power of love and loss

for the first time.

He cannot understand lost love because he's immortal.

But the song connects with him.

And because of that power, because of that song,

Orpheus is allowed to bring Eurydice back.

[LYRE PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: On one condition, Orpheus

has to walk out of Hades and trust

that Eurydice is following behind him.

But if he looks back to make sure, he will lose her forever.

KRISTINA MILNOR: As Orpheus and Eurydice are making their way

to the world above, Orpheus begins to doubt.

He begins to wonder, is Eurydice really there?

Is Hades playing some kind of terrible trick on him?

And as he gets closer and closer and closer to the world above,

this doubt grows and grows and grows in him.

And eventually, just as they're about to break through

to the surface, he can't take it anymore and he turns around

and he sees Eurydice.

RENAUD GAGNE: And when he does and his eyes with her,

she instantly gets dragged back down into the underworld.

[SCREAMS]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Hades has proven once again,

that his power over the dead is absolute.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

But his authority will soon be challenged by a power far

greater than him.

It will be the ultimate clash of the gods recorded for all time

in the book of Revelation.

Hades has proven once again that his power over the dead

[MUSIC PLAYING]

is absolute.

He has taken Orpheus his wife, Eurydice.

Orpheus is desolate.

After returning from the underworld,

the musician travels deep into the wilderness

and sings to everyone he meets about the tragedy of death.

[LYRE PLAYING]

This is the myth, but what is the connection to reality?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

An amazing archaeological find is shedding new light on how

the ancient Greeks viewed the master of death and his domain.

Over the last two centuries, mysterious gold inscriptions

have been discovered in ancient grave sites.

SARAH JOHNSTON: Many, many of them

have been found in a place that suggests that they were

originally put on the mouth of the corpse

when the corpse was buried.

And they're shaped like lips.

And so, it's almost as if the inscription on the tablet

is meant to be speaking on behalf of the dead.

NARRATOR: They are covered with references to Hades, the god

and the place.

They read like directions into the underworld

from someone who's been there.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You will find to the left of the House of Hades a spring,

as soon as the soul has left the light of the sun,

go to the right being very careful.

RENAUD GAGNE: These texts have been described as passports

to the underworld.

And they described what happened,

what stages the dead would go through, what guardians they

would meet, and what they had to say to the guardians

in order to pass and to reach the underworld.

NARRATOR: They are real life inscriptions inspired by myth,

visions of the afterlife believed

to be derived from the mythical poems of Orpheus.

SARAH JOHNSTON: It was believed that while he was

in the underworld he learned a great deal about the way

it worked.

So when he came back to the upper world without his wife,

he wrote poems about the underworld.

And these poems then were passed down from person

to person, what they should do in the underworld, what they

shouldn't do.

And it's, in fact, portions of these poems that are inscribed

upon the gold tablets.

[HOWLS]

NARRATOR: The ancients used the poems of Orpheus

as an instruction manual for life

after death, a way to understand and navigate

the realm of Hades.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[GROWLS]

For thousands of years, this Greek vision of the afterlife

endured.

But in the first few centuries AD, a new set of ideas

revolutionized the way the ancient world looked at death.

[CHANTING]

The god, Hades, was about to come face

to face with a powerful new force--

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Jesus Christ.

Christian tradition tells of an epic battle

between the old order and the new, a final clash of the gods.

At the center of the showdown stands Hades.

And Christ has come to collect his souls.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID GEORGE: There's a rewriting

of the gospel of Nicodemus.

It's called the Descensus Christi, the Descent of Christ

into Hades.

After Jesus's death, he goes and confronts Hades.

Jesus comes in as the king of glory and opens the gates

and leads all of the people in Hades into Paradise.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: In Hades, Jesus preaches

to Greece's dead souls.

The message is clear to both the living and the dead,

reject Hades and embrace the new savior.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

But what will become of the master

of the dead in this new order?

The final moments of Hades are described in the Bible's Book

of Revelation which foretells the end of days.

DAVID GEORGE: To show his power over death, according

to Revelation, Jesus will destroy Hades and death itself.

NARRATOR: When Christ returns for the Last Judgment,

he will cast the warden of death into a lake of fire.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID GEORGE: He gives, by the destruction of Hades,

the destruction of the realm of the dead, a victory over death,

not for the individual, but for all of creation.

NARRATOR: Ultimately, Hades is destined

to share in the fate of all the souls under his command.

Even he can't escape the clutches of death.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

DAVID GEORGE: The potency of the stories about Hades

is we can see how we, as humans, look at death, how we as humans

hope perhaps to either cheat death

or to find a way to survive what we fear

is our existence coming to an end.

SARAH JOHNSTON: The underworld is fascinating.

People like to imagine what might happen there because it's

creepy, it's eerie, it's utterly unlike anything

that happens in this world.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[GROWLS]

[SCREAMS]

DAVID GEORGE: These stories they're-- they're more than

just local myths, local stories to scare children or to make

you feel better.

they're what it is to be human in that most fundamental way

and that is to meet your own mortality.

[MUSIC PLAYING]