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CHAPTER V - CULTS OF HADES-PLOUTON
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
Summary
Although this worship is among the minor phenomena of Greek polytheism and never attained any great significance for Hellenic religious history or civilization, yet some questions of interest arise concerning it, and some facts of importance may emerge. The discussion and exposition of them can be brief in the present state of our knowledge. The citations and other kinds of evidence collected below suffice to show that the god of the lower world was worshipped over a wide area of the Hellenic world, appearing under various forms and names, as Plouton or Plouteus, Zeus Chthonios, Zeus Εủβουλεύς, with whom Zeus Meilichios had affinity, as Zeus ∑κοτίτας, Klymenos, Trophonios, and, very rarely, Hades. But it would be going beyond the evidence to maintain at once that his worship was a common inheritance of all the Hellenic stocks. Some of these cults may, for all we know, have been of late origin, and Eleusinian influence may have been responsible for some; for we have seen reason to believe that there was an ancient Plouton-cult and Ploutoneion at Eleusis, and that Eubouleus was one of his synonyms there; and we may suppose that these appellatives were engrafted thence upon the ritual of other Greek states.
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- The Cults of the Greek States , pp. 280 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1907