All language subtitles for Clash of the Gods - S01E03 - Hades

This is the land of the dead.

And this its master.

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.

Prepare to descend
into the underworld

and experience the story
as the ancients heard it.

This is the truth
behind the myth of Hades.

In a lush green pasture
a beautiful young woman picks flowers.

Her name is Persephone

and she is being watched.

In Greek mythology, when a young
maiden is plucking flowers in the meadow

something bad is about to happen.

Suddenly the ground breaks open.

An unseen hand reaches up
from the darkness

and drags her down
into the underworld.

Hades, god of the dead
has chosen his queen.

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.

He is the god of the dead

and none of us want to die.

He is to be feared.
His power is awesome.

The Greeks wanted
nothing to do with Hades

because to know him
is to be dead.

The Greeks tended not to depict
or represent Hades.

There are not temples built to him.

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

like a kind of uncle whose
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.

The myth of Hades was created
to make sense of what happens

after we die.

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.

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.

We, in a Christian context, think that

what happens to you after your 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, those places
were all located in one place,

they were all the underworld.

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
so we continue to wonder.

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.

The fate of the average
person in the underworld

is just to have to
wander around a grey shade

and live a not very exciting
or interesting life.

It's a kind of sad place to be.

It's sort of like the Catholic
conception of limbo.

A sort of twilight place,
quiet and peaceful

but full of mourning trees,

where the soul would simply
wander aimlessly.

And then there is the place reserved
for those who've most offended the gods.

A vast abyss, 40,000 miles deep.

A dungeon of suffering
and eternal torment

surrounded by a flaming river.

This is Tartarus.

The souls of very bad people
would be sent to Tartarus,

which is quite like the
Christian conception of hell.

In fact, Tartarus was so closely
linked with hell by the early Christians

that it was even mentioned
in the New Testament.

It appears in a verbal form
in the Second Epistle of Peter

having to do with people being
thrown into Tartarus.

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.

For the fortunate few,

paradise awaits in the
third realm of Hades,

the islands of the blessed,
the ancient Greek equivalent of heaven.

Everything grows by itself and you
can eat your field with no work,

there is absolutely no work.

There is constant rejoicing,
there are round dances,

there are streams and
there is pure friendship.

That was where famous
and glorious people

would spend the rest of their lives.

In the myth, all human beings must
eventually succumb to Hades' command.

For some, that day
comes far too soon.

Hades has kidnapped a young
maiden named Persephone.

He holds her captive
in the underworld.

Hades has taken her away to his
realm to be his wife forever.

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.

This is one myth that defines one of the
most central aspects of the universe.

Demeter is able to destroy human kind.

She can rip the world apart.

The ancient Greeks believed

Demeter was responsible for
the changing of the seasons.

And that Persephone's
disappearance started the cycle.

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 of winters.

Faced with the prospect
of an endless frost,

the other gods command Hades
to return Persephone.

But Hades has a plan.

Hades knew that if he could get her

to eat food belonging to the underneath

that she would then become part
of the underneath.

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.

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.

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.

The ancient Greeks believed Persephone
travelled to and from the underworld

with each change of seasons.

But how did she get there?

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.

According to the myth,

Demeter met with her
daughter Persephone right here.

Persephone came out from the
underworld through this cave.

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.

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.

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 artefacts 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.

You need to remember that temples
to Hades are not common,

because of who he is
and what his worship is,

there aren't 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
at Eleusis is just striking.

It was here, at Eleusis,

that ancient Greece's largest
religious cult met to worship.

A secret society obsessed with death.

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.

Surviving texts revealed that the Cult
members came here in search

of a shortcut to paradise,

a path to eternal bliss
in the realm of Hades.

Cults would give you the information

you needed to find your way
to the Islands of the Blessed.

You lived it out
in relative splendour

with great abundance of
food and parties and wine.

Experts believe the cult at Eleusis
may have influenced another religion

that promises life after death...

Christianity.

We know that the Cult helped to liberate
people from the fear of death.

And very interestingly, prepared
the ground for Christianity.

It sowed the seeds of a universal Cult

that revolved around
the defeat of death.

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.

Hades is the ancient Greek god
of the underworld.

A dark lord who controls
all dead souls.

But he wasn't always
so menacing.

In the palace of the gods
a baby's cries pierce the silence.

A newborn son,
his name is Hades.

His father is Kronos,
the king of Greece's ruling gods

the Titans.

Kronos 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.

Kronos' solution to the problem
was, eat your kids.

In one swift motion
Kronos consumes his newborn son.

Infanticide wasn't really
common in ancient Greece

so the idea of a father deliberately
trying to kill his children

would have been very
shocking to them.

Now, of course,
since they're immortal,

the children that Kronos
swallows are not dead,

they are just locked away
inside of his belly.

Hades and most of his siblings
grow up inside their father's stomach.

But one child was able
to escape Kronos' wrath,

his name is Zeus.

He returns as a grown god and frees
his trapped brothers and sisters.

The siblings now unite
to form the Olympians

and seize control of the
universe from their parents

in a final clash with the Titans.

After the overthrow of the Titans

the Olympians have the
job of trying to figure out

who does what in this new order.

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.

Hades is the oldest child and according
to the real Greek law of the time

that gives him an advantage.

Throughout most of the Greek world
the law of primogenitor was the practice.

Which means the oldest born,
who should be Hades,

should have by right inherited
the largest share.

But Zeus, the youngest brother,
has his own ambitions to rule the world.

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

The brothers decide to draw lots -

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

In ancient Greek custom the drawing
of lots was a typical procedure

used to divide things that were
otherwise very difficult to discern.

And everybody would have recognised

that the drawing of lots was a legitimate
way to make a tough call like this.

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.

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.

It is a tragic turning point for Hades.

He could have ruled the universe,

instead he is condemned
to the realm of the dead.

In ancient Greece,
the attitude 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.

Hades' new home is dark, bleak,

and filled with the
sadness of dead souls.

Ancient texts describe it as a dank
expanse of caves and rivers.

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.

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

This is Diros,

a network of caves that runs
for miles beneath Greece.

Its maze of rivers and caverns

match the ancient descriptions
of Hades perfectly.

Caves function as in-between spaces.

They were clearly understood to be
potential points of transition

between the upper world
and the underworld.

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 retained their
sacred significance.

The experience of entering and
being in such a gloomy place

definitely affected the
imagination of Greeks

and their construction

of what Hades and the
underworld must have looked like.

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.

According to Greek myth,

the god Hades rules a
dark and dank universe.

The underworld of the dead.

It begins to metamorphise
the afterlife into a kingdom.

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

and to reward the good.

Hades assembles a gang of enforcers
to watch over his dead souls.

Cerberus, a ferocious
three-headed guard dog.

The Hundred-handers,
prison guards of Tartarus.

And the principle henchman of Hades,
Charon.

He patrols the river Styx,
the waterway of hate.

Charon has a job of faring souls
from one side of the world,

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.

He is a skeletal figure, very demonic,
and shadowy.

He, in essence, is the border
between life and death.

He is decayed.

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.

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.

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.

This ritual was essential
to the ancient Greeks.

If the coin wasn't placed,
the deceased would never find peace.

There is no doubt that the ancients
took this seriously.

Many states had laws
that punished people

who did not fulfil 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.

The dead could come back,
haunt, ask for something,

cry, complain, hurt, destroy,
all of these ideas are found

from the earliest stories
that we have until now.

This is myth,
but what is the evidence?

The Greeks left behind a clue
about their belief in ghosts.

Ancient voodoo dolls.

Archaeologists excavating
graves in Greece

have discovered tiny lead figurines

with their hands
and feet bound together.

And they are all enclosed in small
coffins etched with curses.

Inscribed on this 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're 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 dead to somehow
screw up his business.

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".

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,

so they were restless
and unhappy and angry,

and it would be easier to get one
of them to do something nasty for you.

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.

An old weakened man stands
wearily at the bottom of a mountain.

Sweat streams down his face.

Veins explode from the 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.

Sisyphus tells 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.

Who has not imagined tricking death?

Sisyphus, through his rhetorical art,
through his intelligence,

through his sheer wit,
he's able to convince the god of death,

or to find a way out of hell.

Sisyphus knew better than to try
deceiving the king of the dead,

instead he went to the queen.

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 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.

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.

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.

Sisyphus thought that
he could outwit the gods,

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

To the ancient Greeks such
an attitude was dangerous.

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

Greeks believed that when someone died
they needed to be put in their place

and kept there.

The assumption 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.

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.

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.

From the story of Sisyphus,
in which we have a person who's engaged

in an absolutely pointless
endeavour for eternity,

we got the modern English
word of "Sisyphean",

which describes some kind of a task
that seems very arduous

and also entirely pointless.

The story of Sisyphus sent a strong
message to the ancient Greeks,

that no one can outwit
death or its master.

Hades is the one who humans most try
to trick or deceive or get around,

and we can understand this.
Hades is that god

whose will and power
over you is absolute,

no one can negotiate
their way out of death.

But even after Sisyphus
there are still those who try.

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.

Orpheus was the founder
of the musical tradition.

He was the person who
invented poetry and music.

He was particularly
adept with the lyre

which was an ancient stringed
musical instrument

shaped like a "U" with a bar across
the top and the strings coming down.

One of the important
things you need to remember

about the word "music"
in Greek, "aoidos",

it means both "song" but it also
means magical incantation,

so Orpheus engaged
in magic when he sung.

There is only one thing
Orpheus loves more than music,

his stunning young bride,
Euridice.

One of the profoundly sad things
about the Orpheus and Euridice story

is how perfectly happy
and in love they were.

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

something's gonna happen,

because it doesn't belong
to mortals to be that happy.

One day, as Euridice
picks fruit in the grove,

she is spotted by a satyr,

a hideous half-goat,
half-man beast

known for his uncontrollable sex drive.

Satyrs represented the male force
of nature uncontrolled,

it was pure appetite, it was a desire
to procreate and mate.

The satyr lunges for Euridice.

She tries to escape.

But the satyr corners her.

She backs away terrified...

and slips into a pit
of poisonous vipers.

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

She is in the clutches of Hades.

Orpheus is so in love with Euridice

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

Orpheus refuses to accept
his wife's death.

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

Life cannot possibly
go on without Euridice.

With his lyre as an only weapon

he resolves to go
down to the underworld.

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.

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
thing in Greek literature,

it was something they
liked to think about,

death is something
that everyone shares.

We can't help but think about it.

With his beautiful and sad songs

Orpheus charms his way
past the boatman Charon

and across the river Styx.

But another terrifying obstacle
awaits him on the other side...

Cerberus, the three-headed
guard dog of Hades.

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
getting past this dog.

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.

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.

He is 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.

Orpheus will attempt to do
what no mortal ever has,

to enchant the lord of the dead.

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.

Another figure watches
from the shadows.

Orpheus' dead wife, Euridice.

Hades is so moved by the music

he decides to give Orpheus a chance
to win his wife's freedom.

Hades recognises 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 Euridice back.

On one condition, Orpheus
has to walk out of Hades

and trust that Euridice
is following behind him.

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

As Orpheus and Euridice
are making their way

to the world above,
Orpheus begins to doubt.

He begins to wonder,
is Euridice really there,

is Hades playing some kind of
terrible trick on him,

and as he gets closer and closer
to the world above

this doubt grows and grows in him.

And eventually, just when they are
about to break through to the surface

he can't take it any more and he turns
around and he sees Euridice.

And when he does and
catches eyes with her,

she instantly gets dragged
back down into the underworld.

Hades has proven once again that
his power over the dead is absolute.

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 is absolute.

He has taken Orpheus' wife Euridice.

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.

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

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.

Many of them have been found
in a place that suggests

they were originally put on the mouth
of the corpse when it was buried.

And they're shaped like lips,

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

is meant to be speaking
on behalf of the dead.

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.

"You will find to the left
of the House of Hades, the Spring.

"As soon as the soul has left
the light of the Sun,

"go to the right,
being very careful. "

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.

They are real-life inscriptions
inspired by myth.

Visions of the afterlife
believed to be derived

from the mythical poems of Orpheus.

It was believed that while
he was in the underworld

he learnt 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.

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.

For thousands of years, this Greek
vision of the afterlife endured,

but in the first few centuries AD,

a new set of ideas revolutionised the way
the ancient world looked at death.

The god Hades was about to come
face to face with a powerful new force...

Jesus Christ.

Christian tradition tells of an epic
battle between the old order and the new.

A final clash of the gods.

At the centre of
the showdown stands Hades.

And Christ has come
to collect his souls.

There's a re-writing of
the gospel in Nicodemus

called the "Descensus Christi",

the descent of Christ into Hades.

After Jesus' death,

he goes in 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.

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 saviour.

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.

To show his power over death,
according to Revelation,

Jesus will destroy
Hades and death itself.

When Christ returns
for the last judgement,

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The stories, 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,