Statue of Ploutos and the cornucopia, or the horn of plenty.
Man, there’s so many stuff to talk about once you actually start paying attention to the news. There’s still turmoil about Greece, who is trying to secure another 8 billion loan from the IMF, and other miscellaneous financial babbling. Did you know that Greece is one of the only cultures to actually possess a god related to wealth and riches? I guess avarice is just hardwired into their genetics somehow. And no, before all you fumbling classicists start to think that I’m talking about Haides (which in all fairness is an honest mistake to make since you are nowhere near sufficiently enlightened, that is why you’re reading this dazzling digital publication, after all), I’m not.
I found out from theoi.com that there was a Ploutos, the son of Iason and Demeter, and the personification of wealth. Zeus blinded the poor guy just so he would distribute capital fortune evenly and without any disposition towards the good and virtuous. How egalitarian of those ancient Greeks, eh? Of course, if you’re pious you don’t need earthly riches, you just crave the supernatural abundance of divine grace and perhaps the security of a profitable spot in the paradisial afterlife, which is filled to burst with spiritual prosperity anyway. Well, keep reading and you might just get there.
Now we arrive at Haides, the god of the underworld and the dead, who carried the title Plouton, “lord of riches”, seeing as how below the surface of the earth all kinds of unimaginable treasures were stored. Haides was therefore normally depicted with a cornucopia that sprouted fertility, as was Ploutos. So hey, my advice to the Greeks is: start digging and stop begging.
Haides! With a cornucopia! Pouring fertility! On the earth! Next to him Persephone! His wife! Theoi.com!? Never heard of it!
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