A few days ago
Anonymous

Why is Hades’ symbol a cornocopia?

My reading class went over this and we have tried almost every search engine! We are learning about the gods and goddess’ and we learned all of their sybols. There is another symbol but we can not find out why a cornocopia is Hades’ symbol.

Please help!

Thank you!

Top 3 Answers
A few days ago
Ithilien

Favorite Answer

I just googled a minute and I came up with this explanation:

“The cornucopia (Latin: Cornu Copiae) is a symbol of food and abundance dating back to the 5th Century BCE, also referred to as Horn of Plenty, Horn of Amalthea, and harvest cone”

“The forbidding side of Hades was natuarally emphasized, but it was not the only one. As Pluto, the giver of wealth, he was sometimes shown in a more favourable light to signify that things – food and corn – come from the lowest depths of the earth and the bottom of the earth contains trasures as well as the souls of the dead.”

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A few days ago
Goldmind
Dionysus, the god of fertility, and Hades, the god of death/underworld, became combined in the figure of Pluto (“wealth,” in Greek, “ploutos”). Pluto is a god of fertility and wealth, which rises from underground (think of seeds sprouting from the ground into mature trees) into fruition. In other words, all wealth has a beginning point, just as all trees start as seeds beneath the earth – the key to wealth is to understand its beginning – hence, a god of the underworld is key to understanding the creation of wealth.

Additionally, for anything new to be created, something old has to die – this is also the meaning of the Crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. So a god of death is key – death must precede new growth, that is, to fertilize or create the new (abundance or wealth, nicely symbolized as a cornucopia), something has to die (such as thoughts of despair, the idea that one cannot become wealthy, low self-esteem, hidden prejudices against making money, etc). Cool stuff, and very real! Pluto’s principal attribute is the cornucopia and, in artifacts, Hades sometimes takes over Pluto’s horn of plenty (the cornucopia). Heraclitus, an early Greek philosopher and scholar, said Pluto and Hades were actually the same god.

So the horn of plenty, or cornucopia, indicates that Hades, too, is associated with the fertility of the earth.

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A few days ago
Anonymous
go to

wikipedia.org

and type hades

see what comes out

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