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Documentary, History Channel - Clash of the Gods - S01E03 Hades
#Hades #Documentary #ClashoftheGods
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00:00This is the land of the dead, and this is its master, Hades, a god so feared no one
00:16would speak his name. His myth reveals how the ancient Greeks viewed death. It is a chilling
00:24vision of the one fate no mortal can escape, and it has eerie links to the real ancient
00:30world. Curses, ghosts, and secret cults. Prepare to descend into the underworld and experience
00:41the story as the ancients heard it. This is the truth behind the myth of Hades.
00:54In a lush, green pasture, a beautiful young woman picks flowers. Her name is Persephone,
01:10and she is being watched. In Greek mythology, when a young maiden is plucking flowers in
01:19the meadow, something bad is about to happen.
01:26Suddenly the ground breaks open. An unseen hand reaches up from the darkness and drags her
01:36down into the underworld. Hades, god of the dead, has chosen his queen.
01:55Hades is mythology's warden of death. He commands the vast and frightening realm that all mortals,
02:03good and bad, must enter when they die. It is his job to make sure they never escape.
02:12He is the god of the dead, and none of us want to die. He is to be feared. His power is awesome.
02:21The Greeks wanted nothing to do with Hades, because to know him is to be dead.
02:28The Greeks tended not to depict or represent Hades. There are not temples built to him. He's someone
02:36that is kept at arm's length, like a kind of uncle whose business you're not sure about and don't want
02:41to talk about too much. The main idea is that for the ancient Greeks, to be dead is not a very good
02:47thing. The myth of Hades was created to make sense of what happens after we die.
02:59These stories reflect human yearning to hold on. We can see in them how the Greeks thought
03:08about death, what their hopes and fears were about death. A lot of religious traditions try
03:16and supply a way in which your existence can continue in the next world. And Greek religious
03:27traditions are no different.
03:31According to the myth, dead souls enter a vast and gloomy underworld, a realm named after
03:38its master, Hades. It is the ancient Greek equivalent of heaven, hell, and limbo, all under one roof.
03:50We, in a Christian context, think that what happens to you after death has to do with what you've
03:59done here on earth. If you've been a good person, then you go to heaven. If you've been a bad person,
04:04you go to hell. For the Greeks, actually, those places were all located in one place. They were
04:10all the underworld.
04:11It's the one place we can't ever see. We can make up stories about what might be going on
04:18there, the great punishments that are occurring or the terrible things that might be happening,
04:22but we never know, and so we continue to wonder.
04:27In the myth, there are three levels of Hades. Most of the dead descend to the fields of Asphodel,
04:35the dreary resting place of the nameless masses.
04:39The fate of the average person in the underworld is just to have to wander around a gray shade
04:44and live a not very exciting or interesting life. It's a kind of sad place to be.
04:49It was sort of like the Catholic conception of limbo, a sort of twilight place, quiet and peaceful,
04:57but full of mourning trees, where the soul would simply wander aimlessly.
05:06And then there is the place reserved for those who've most offended the gods.
05:11A vast abyss 40,000 miles deep, a dungeon of suffering and eternal torment, surrounded by a flaming river.
05:23This is Tartarus.
05:26The souls of very bad people would be sent to Tartarus, which is quite like the Christian conception of hell.
05:33In fact, Tartarus was so closely linked with hell by the early Christians that it was even mentioned in the New Testament.
05:42It appears in a verbal form in 2 Peter, having to do with people being thrown into Tartarus.
05:50Then there were a few who were terribly wicked who were punished in Tartarus.
05:56And that, I think, is the origin of what Christians know as hell.
06:01For the fortunate few, paradise awaits in the third realm of Hades, the islands of the blessed, the ancient Greek equivalent of heaven.
06:16Everything grows by itself, and you can eat your fill with no work.
06:21There is absolutely no work, there is constant rejoicing, there are round dances, there are streams, and there is pure friendship.
06:33That was where famous and glorious people would spend the rest of their lives.
06:40In the myth, all human beings must eventually succumb to Hades' command.
06:46For some, that day comes far too soon.
06:51Hades has kidnapped a young maiden named Persephone.
06:57He holds her captive in the underworld.
07:01Hades has taken her away to his realm to be his wife forever.
07:06But Persephone is not forgotten.
07:10In the world above, her powerful mother is searching for her.
07:15She is Demeter, goddess of the harvest, the woman who feeds the world.
07:21This is one myth that defines one of the most central aspects of the universe.
07:29Demeter is able to destroy humankind.
07:34She can rip the world apart.
07:35The ancient Greeks believed Demeter was responsible for the changing of the seasons, and that Persephone's disappearance started the cycle.
07:46She didn't know what had happened to her daughter.
07:49So, she wandered the earth, and in her grief at the loss of her daughter, she forgot to give fertility to the land.
07:57So, plants withered and died, human beings no longer gave birth.
08:01The earth descended into the deepest, deepest of winters.
08:08Faced with the prospect of an endless frost, the other gods command Hades to return Persephone.
08:16But Hades has a plan.
08:21Hades knew that if he could get her to eat food belonging to the underneath, that she would then become part of the underneath.
08:31He offers Persephone a snack of pomegranate seeds.
08:37She naively accepts, and seals her fate.
08:42It is a mistake for which the entire planet will pay.
08:50She must now spend three months of every year in the underworld.
08:54One month for every seed she ate.
08:56The rest of the year, she can spend with her mother.
09:02When Persephone is down in the underworld, Demeter doesn't give earth the fertility that it needs,
09:09and that is what the Greeks understood as winter.
09:12When Persephone returns to her mother, Demeter rejoices, and that's what we have as spring and summer.
09:18The ancient Greeks believed Persephone traveled to and from the underworld with each change of seasons.
09:28But how did she get there?
09:35The answer lies in a cave near the Greek town of Eleusis, just northwest of Athens.
09:41To the ancients, this wasn't just a cave.
09:46It was a portal of death.
09:49According to the myth, Demeter met with her daughter Persephone right here.
09:53Persephone came out from the underworld through this cave.
09:58A boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
10:03And between real life and myth.
10:07But this wasn't the only passage into Hades.
10:11There were lots of entrances to the underworld in ancient Greece.
10:15In fact, it was sort of a competing industry.
10:17It was a little bit like the way that Americans used to say George Washington slept here.
10:21Every locale wanted to be able to say, we have an entrance to the underworld.
10:25This was a place of great importance to the ancient Greeks.
10:29In fact, experts determined that the ruins found near the cave entrance were the remains of a temple.
10:36Among the artifacts discovered there was a stone relief.
10:41With an inscription reading simply, to the god and goddess.
10:46It was a dedication to a god who couldn't be called by name.
10:49A shrine to the angel of death himself.
10:53Hades.
10:55You need to remember that temples to Hades are not common.
10:59Because of who he is and what his worship is, there aren't many reasons to build temples.
11:08In fact, the way you would get his attention is you smash on the ground and say, hey, Hades.
11:12In the 80s.
11:13So the fact that there is a temple at Eleusis is just striking.
11:20It was here at Eleusis that ancient Greece's largest religious cult met to worship.
11:27A secret society obsessed with death.
11:31We know historical personages who would go there and stay and go through the initiation.
11:38Plato, Cicero, Socrates.
11:43That tells you the importance of it.
11:49Surviving texts reveal that the cult members came here in search of a shortcut to paradise.
11:56A path to eternal bliss in the realm of Hades.
12:02Cults would give you the information you needed to find your way to the islands of the blessed.
12:06You lived it out in relative splendor with great abundance of food and parties and wine.
12:16Experts believe the cult at Eleusis may have influenced another religion that promises life after death.
12:24Christianity.
12:26We know that the cult helped to liberate people from the fear of death.
12:32It very interestingly prepared the ground for Christianity.
12:36It sowed the seeds of a universal cult that revolved around the defeat of death.
12:43To the ancient Greeks, this was the face of death.
12:52In the myth, Hades is a merciless master of souls.
12:57But he was not always this way.
13:01He has undergone a dramatic transformation.
13:07From forgotten child to feared God.
13:11In fact, he was cursed from the moment of birth.
13:15When he was eaten alive by his own father.
13:18Hades is the ancient Greek god of the underworld.
13:28A dark lord who controls all dead souls.
13:32But he wasn't always so menacing.
13:38In the palace of the gods, a baby's cries pierce the silence.
13:52A newborn son.
13:53His name is Hades.
14:00His father is Cronus.
14:02The king of Greece's ruling gods.
14:07The titans.
14:10Cronus was told in a prophecy that one of his children would murder him.
14:14And he is determined to make sure that doesn't happen.
14:18The father fears being replaced by the son.
14:20That's human psychology.
14:21Cronus' solution to the problem was eat your kids.
14:34In one swift motion, Cronus consumes his newborn son.
14:44Infanticide wasn't really common in ancient Greece.
14:47So the idea of a father actually deliberately trying to kill his children would have been very shocking to them.
14:56Now, of course, since they're immortal, the children that Cronus swallows are not dead.
15:03They are just locked away inside of his belly.
15:05Hades and most of his siblings grow up inside their father's stomach.
15:12But one child was able to escape Cronus' wrath.
15:17His name is Zeus.
15:19He returns as a grown god and frees his trapped brothers and sisters.
15:28The siblings now unite to form the Olympians.
15:33And seize control of the universe from their parents in a final clash with the Titans.
15:46After the overthrow of the Titans, the Olympians have the job of trying to figure out now who does what in this new order.
16:05Hades, Poseidon and Zeus.
16:10The three male Olympians agree to divide the spoils of conquest.
16:15It is a defining moment for Hades.
16:18One that will forever determine the power structure of the gods.
16:22Hades is the oldest child, and according to the real Greek law of the time, that gives him an advantage.
16:34Throughout most of the Greek world, the law of primogeniture was the practice,
16:40which means the oldest born, who should be Hades, should have by right inherited the largest share.
16:46But Zeus, the youngest brother, has his own ambitions to rule the world.
16:55It is a clash between Zeus' ambition and Hades' birthright.
17:01The brothers decide to draw lots.
17:05Whoever wins the heavens will become the king of the gods.
17:09In ancient Greek custom, the drawing of lots was a typical procedure used to divide things up that were otherwise very difficult to discern.
17:21And everybody would have recognized that the drawing of lots was a legitimate way to make a tough call like this.
17:30The gods draw.
17:31Poseidon claims the seas.
17:40Zeus claims the heavens, thus becoming mythology's supreme commander.
17:48And Hades draws the short straw.
17:51He is left with the land of the dead.
17:53This was not something he chose for himself.
18:01It was fated him, he did it, but it bent him in some ways.
18:06It made him not a happy god.
18:10It is a tragic turning point for Hades.
18:14He could have ruled the universe.
18:16Instead, he is condemned to the realm of the dead.
18:19In ancient Greece, the attitude towards death was not so different to our feelings today towards death.
18:32So, people would not worship Hades as much as they did Poseidon and Jews.
18:40Other gods do not come to see him because death is hateful to the gods.
18:53Hades' new home is dark, bleak, and filled with the sadness of dead souls.
19:04Ancient texts describe it as a dank expanse of caves and rivers.
19:08It is a place that is dark and gloomy.
19:14Its rivers are full of mist.
19:17It has the stench of decay.
19:21It's a very forbidding place.
19:23It's a place where if you go, you do not come back from.
19:29So goes the myth.
19:31But could it be based on reality?
19:32Based on reality?
19:43This is Duros.
19:45A network of caves that runs from miles beneath Greece.
19:49Its maze of rivers and caverns match the ancient descriptions of Hades perfectly.
19:55Caves functioned as in between spaces.
19:58They were clearly understood to be potential points of transition between the upper world and the underworld.
20:05Caves are exceedingly important throughout the Greek world.
20:09Because the first humans who lived there lived in caves.
20:16Even after they move out and start building and practicing agriculture, these caves retain their sacred significance.
20:25The 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.
20:43The ancient Greeks were terrified of Hades and his morbid realm.
20:55But they were even more afraid of the dead souls who were denied access to it.
21:01According to the myth, these rejected spirits would return to haunt the living.
21:08Ghosts.
21:13Ghosts.
21:14Ghosts.
21:15Ghosts.
21:16Ghosts.
21:17Ghosts.
21:18Ghosts.
21:20According to Greek myth, the god Hades rules a dark and dank universe.
21:25The underworld of the dead.
21:32It begins to metamorphize the afterlife into a kingdom.
21:38And the function of any just monarch is to punish the wicked and to reward the good.
21:48Hades assembles a gang of enforcers to watch over his dead souls.
21:52Cerberus.
21:53Cerberus, a ferocious three-headed guard dog.
21:59The hundred handers, prison guards of Tartarus.
22:04And the principal henchman of Hades.
22:08Karen.
22:09He patrols the river Styx, the waterway of hate.
22:22Charon 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 underworld proper or the world of the dead.
22:31He's a skeletal figure, very demonic and shadowy.
22:38He, in essence, is the border between life and death.
22:43He's decay.
22:44In terms of popular culture, he comes down as the grim reaper.
22:52He comes down as the one who will point his finger and take you.
22:58There is no way into Hades except through Karen.
23:04And no one can cross the river Styx for free.
23:09Every dead soul must offer a coin for passage.
23:14If the soul doesn't have that money to pay the ferryman, it wanders forever unable to rest on the shore of the Styx.
23:23This is why ancient Greeks would place a coin either under the tongue or on the eyelids of the corpse of the dead person.
23:35This ritual was essential to the ancient Greeks.
23:39If the coin wasn't placed, the deceased would never find peace.
23:43There is no doubt that the ancients took this seriously.
23:46Many states had laws that punished people who did not fulfill their duty to bury the dead.
23:56The family had obligations to make sure that the dead were cut off from this world and sent to the next.
24:03Because if they didn't, the dead would be ghosts in this world.
24:07And that affected everyone.
24:08The dead could come back, hunt, ask for something, cry, complain, hurt, destroy.
24:20All of these ideas are found from the earliest sources we have until now.
24:26This is the myth.
24:28But what is the evidence?
24:29The Greeks left behind a clue about their belief in ghosts.
24:39Ancient voodoo dolls.
24:42Archaeologists excavating graves in Greece have discovered tiny lead figurines.
24:49With their hands and feet bound together.
24:52And they are all enclosed in small coffins etched with curses.
24:59Inscribed 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.
25:11If you were competing in a boxing match, you might ask the dead to restrain the arm of your opponent.
25:17Another realm in which they were frequently used is business.
25:21So 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.
25:31These voodoo dolls were placed in the graves of those who most likely never made it to Hades.
25:37They were known as the restless dead.
25:40People who had died too young, people who had died violently, for example by being murdered, or people who had not received proper burial.
25:51These ghosts could not get into the underworld.
25:55And so these ghosts were restless and unhappy and angry.
25:58And it would be easier to get one of them to do something nasty for you.
26:04Those souls who did make it into the underworld were locked away for good.
26:08Hades punishment for any who tried to leave would be relentless.
26:14But that didn't stop some from trying.
26:20An old, weakened man stands wearily at the bottom of a mountain.
26:30Sweat streams down his face.
26:34Veins explode from his skin.
26:37His name is Sisyphus.
26:40And he is the first soul who ever dared to defy the will of Hades.
26:45Just before his life on Earth ended, Sisyphus made plans to cheat death.
26:50Sisyphus says to his wife, please don't bury me.
26:55He knows that if his wife doesn't bury him, he won't go all the way through to the other side of Hades.
27:00He'll be stuck in this kind of no man's land.
27:01Who has not imagined tricking death?
27:07Sisyphus, 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.
27:24Sisyphus knew better than to try deceiving the king of the dead.
27:28Instead, he went to the queen.
27:33Sisyphus complained to Persephone, the queen of the underworld, that his wife had done this terrible thing.
27:39How could she possibly have treated his body in such a terrible way?
27:43Persephone 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.
27:53Of course, once Sisyphus is back in the world above, he has no intention of returning to Hades.
28:05Sisyphus has done the impossible.
28:08He has tricked death and turned the natural cycle of life on its head.
28:13But the lord of the underworld will have his revenge.
28:17No one cheats Hades and lives to tell about it.
28:20Hades, the god of the dead, releases no one.
28:31But a soul named Sisyphus has slipped through his grasp.
28:37When Hades finds out he has been deceived, he is furious.
28:41He immediately drags Sisyphus back to the underworld.
28:47Sisyphus thought that he could outwit the gods, that he could outwit death, that he could outwit nature.
28:58To the ancient Greeks, such an attitude was dangerous.
29:03Any soul who tried to cheat death was a threat to society.
29:07Greeks believed that when someone died, they needed to be put in their place and kept there.
29:13The assumption there was that the dead were seeking life from the living and draining them of life.
29:18If the dead were always present, they'd suck your life out.
29:26In the myth, the punishment for trying to cheat death is painful and permanent.
29:32Hades condemns Sisyphus to the hell of the ancient world, Tartarus.
29:39There, in the scorching heat, he is forced to push a huge boulder up a mountain.
29:46At the end of each day, he reaches the top, exhausted and in agony, and watches helpless as his boulder rolls back down.
30:01He suffers the same punishment every day, for eternity.
30:06From the story of Sisyphus, in which we have a person who is engaged in an absolutely pointless endeavor for eternity,
30:14we get the modern English word of Sisyphean, which describes some kind of a task that seems very arduous and also entirely pointless.
30:23The story of Sisyphus sent a strong message to the ancient Greeks, that no one can outwit death, or its master.
30:31Hades is the one that humans most try to trick or deceive or get around.
30:38And we can understand this.
30:39Hades is that god whose will over you and whose power over you is absolute.
30:44No one can negotiate their way out of death.
30:47But even after Sisyphus, there are still those who try.
31:01One of them is Orpheus, a musician who makes the sweetest music in the world.
31:12It will become his weapon against the lord of the dead.
31:15Orpheus was the founder of the musical tradition.
31:22He was the person who invented poetry and invented music.
31:25He was particularly adept with the lyre, which was an ancient musical instrument, a stringed instrument,
31:32shaped sort of like a U with a bar across the top and strings coming down.
31:35One of the important things you need to remember about the word music in Greek,
31:42it means both song, but it also means magical incantation.
31:48So Orpheus engaged in magic when he sung.
31:54There is only one thing Orpheus loves more than music.
31:58His stunning young bride, Eurydice.
32:01One of the profoundly sad things about the Orpheus and Eurydice story is just how perfectly happy and in love they were.
32:14And one of the things about the Greeks is that if you're happy, something's going to happen.
32:21Because it doesn't belong to mortals to be that happy.
32:24One day, as Eurydice picks fruit in a grove, she's spotted by a satyr.
32:34A hideous half goat, half man beast, known for its uncontrollable sex drive.
32:39Satyrs represented the male force of nature, uncontrolled.
32:45It was pure appetite. It was a desire to procreate and mate.
32:50The satyr lunges for Eurydice.
32:54She tries to escape.
32:55But the satyr corners her. She backs away, terrified.
33:06And slips into a pit of poisonous vipers.
33:09This is where Orpheus finds her.
33:21But he is too late.
33:23She is in the clutches of Hades.
33:28Orpheus is so in love with Eurydice that he grieves her as no human being has ever grieved anyone.
33:35Orpheus refuses to accept his wife's death.
33:40He resolves to challenge Hades and bring back his wife alive.
33:46Life cannot possibly go on without Eurydice.
33:50With his lyre as an only weapon, he resolves to go down to the underworld.
33:55Orpheus begins a treacherous descent into the depths of the earth.
34:05Failure in his quest will doom his wife forever.
34:10Success will make him a hero.
34:14It's almost as if you can't be a truly Greek hero unless you have been to the underworld and back.
34:20It is a very frequent theme in Greek literature.
34:23It was something they liked to think about.
34:26Death is something that everyone shares.
34:28We can't help but think about it.
34:30With his beautiful and sad songs,
34:34Orpheus charms his way past the boatman Caron and across the river Styx.
34:39But another terrifying obstacle awaits him on the other side.
34:47Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of Hades.
34:53Cerberus was stationed at the gates of the underworld.
34:59He was there to monitor those who came in and out.
35:02No one could get in or out without going past this dog.
35:06This ferocious dog had three heads and was big.
35:10Much bigger than other dogs and much stronger than other dogs.
35:14It's a beast that they see and tremble before.
35:21With trembling fingers, Orpheus strums his lyre.
35:24Cerberus is spellbound.
35:29And the musician has his opening.
35:33But his true test is inside the gates.
35:36Hades himself.
35:38He's going up to the great god Hades.
35:42And just hoping that his command of music will make Hades do what he wants.
35:48But his faith, his confidence, is not in him as the musician, but in the power of music.
35:58Orpheus will attempt to do what no mortal ever has.
36:02To enchant the lord of the dead.
36:07His song was so beautiful and so grief-stricken that everyone, including Hades, wept.
36:13And this is the god of the dead. He doesn't weep easily.
36:19Another figure watches from the shadows.
36:23Orpheus' dead wife, Eurydice.
36:34Hades is so moved by the music.
36:38He decides to give Orpheus a chance to win his wife's freedom.
36:41Hades recognizes the power of love and loss for the first time.
36:47He cannot understand lost love because he's immortal.
36:51But the song connects with him.
36:54And because of that power, because of that song, Orpheus is allowed to bring Eurydice back.
37:02On one condition, Orpheus has to walk out of Hades and trust that Eurydice is following behind him.
37:15But if he looks back to make sure, he will lose her forever.
37:20As Orpheus and Eurydice are making their way to the world above, Orpheus begins to doubt.
37:30He begins to wonder, is Eurydice really there?
37:32Is Hades playing some kind of terrible trick on him?
37:37And as he gets closer and closer and closer to the world above, this doubt grows and grows and grows in him.
37:45And eventually, just as they are about to break through to the surface, he can't take it anymore.
37:50And he turns around and he sees Eurydice.
37:54And when he does and catches eyes with her, she instantly gets dragged back down into the underworld.
38:06Hades has proven once again that his power over the dead is absolute.
38:10But his authority will soon be challenged by a power far greater than him.
38:21It will be the ultimate clash of the gods.
38:24Recorded for all time in the Book of Revelation.
38:34Hades has proven once again that his power over the dead is absolute.
38:40He has taken Orpheus's wife, Eurydice.
38:45Orpheus is desolate.
38:47After returning from the underworld, the musician travels deep into the wilderness.
38:53And sings to everyone he meets about the tragedy of death.
38:57This is the myth.
38:59But what is the connection to reality?
39:01An amazing archaeological find is shedding new light on how the ancient Greeks viewed the master of death and his domain.
39:16Over the last two centuries, mysterious gold inscriptions have been discovered in ancient grave sites.
39:21Many, 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.
39:29And they're shaped like lips.
39:31And so it's almost as if the inscription on the tablet is meant to be speaking on behalf of the dead.
39:35They are covered with references to Hades, the god and the place.
39:41They read like directions into the underworld from someone who's been there.
39:46You will find to the left of the house of Hades a spring.
39:52As soon as the soul has left the light of the sun, go to the right, being very careful.
40:01These texts have been described as passports to the underworld.
40:07And they described what happened, what stages the dead would go through, what guardians they would meet,
40:14and what they had to say to the guardians in order to pass and to reach the underworld.
40:23They are real life inscriptions inspired by myth.
40:29Visions of the afterlife believed to be derived from the mythical poems of Orpheus.
40:38It was believed that while he was in the underworld, he learned a great deal about the way it worked.
40:43So when he came back to the underworld without his wife, he wrote poems about the underworld.
40:49And these poems then were passed down from person to person,
40:53what they should do in the underworld, what they shouldn't do.
40:56And it's in fact portions of these poems that are inscribed upon the gold tablets.
41:03The ancients used the poems of Orpheus as an instruction manual for life after death.
41:07A way to understand and navigate the realm of Hades.
41:17For thousands of years, this Greek vision of the afterlife endured.
41:22But in the first few centuries AD, a new set of ideas revolutionized the way the ancient world looked at death.
41:29The god Hades was about to come face to face with a powerful new force.
41:39Jesus Christ.
41:41Christian tradition tells of an epic battle between the old order and the new.
41:47A final clash of the gods.
41:49At the center of the showdown stands Hades.
41:54And Christ has come to collect his souls.
42:00There's a rewriting of the Gospel of Nicodemus.
42:05It's called the Descensus Christi.
42:07The descent of Christ into Hades.
42:10After Jesus' death, he goes and confronts Hades.
42:15Jesus comes in as the king of glory and opens the gates and leads all of the people in Hades into paradise.
42:25In Hades, Jesus preaches to Greece's dead souls.
42:31The message is clear to both the living and the dead.
42:36Reject Hades and embrace the new savior.
42:38But what will become of the master of the dead in this new order?
42:47The final moments of Hades are described in the Bible's book of Revelation.
42:53Which foretells the end of days.
42:55To show his power over death.
43:01According to Revelation, Jesus will destroy Hades and death itself.
43:09When Christ returns for the last judgment, he will cast the warden of death into a lake of fire.
43:16He 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.
43:30Ultimately, Hades is destined to share in the fate of all the souls under his command.
43:36Even he can't escape the clutches of death.
43:46The potency of the stories about Hades is we can see how we as humans look at death.
43:56How 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.
44:10The underworld is fascinating.
44:12People like to imagine what might happen there because it's creepy, it's eerie, it's utterly unlike anything that happens in this world.
44:19These stories, they're more than just local myths, local stories to scare children or to make you feel better.
44:34They're what it is to be human in that most fundamental way.
44:39And that is to meet your own mortality.
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