Hades

In Greek mythology, Hades, also known as Pluto, was the god of the underworld. The son of Cronos and Rhea, he ruled over the souls of the dead with the aid of his wife, Persephone. Later, Hades became better known as a place, the underworld itself-the world of the dead, separated from the world of the living by the rivers Styx, Acheron, Lethe, Cocytus, and Phlegethon. New arrivals were ferried across the Styx by Charon; unwelcome visitors were deterred from entering Hades by the multiheaded dog, Cerberus. The judges of the dead decided whether a soul would go to the Elysian Fields, for the virtuous; or to Tartarus, a place of punishment; or to the Asphodel Meadows, for those neither virtuous nor evil. In the Greek Old Testament, Hades, a translation of the Hebrew Sheol, refers to the place of departed souls.