Hades cap

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The cap of invisibility and helmet of Hades or helmet of invisibility ( Greek  Ἄϊδος κυνέην Aidos kyneen as much as "dog cap of Hades") was in Greek mythology the helmet or the headgear of the underworld god Hades . It made its wearer invisible.

Just as the Cyclops gave Zeus the thunderbolts and Poseidon the trident as a weapon in the Titanomachia , so they gave Hades the helmet of invisibility, which is accordingly the main attribute of the god.

According to the Byzantine lexicon Suda , Kynee was to be understood as a simple headgear for the rural population, which was previously also made from dog fur .

In mythology, Hades is hardly mentioned as the bearer, rather it is other gods and heroes who use the invisibility cap of the god of the dead for this and that purpose. This includes Athena , who used the Hades cap in the Trojan War to hide her partisanship for the Greeks. With their help, which made them invisible to the eyes of the gods, Diomedes even managed to wound Ares, who was fighting on the side of the Trojans .

With the help of the invisibility cloak that the god Hermes gave him along with his winged sandals, the hero Perseus succeeds in approaching the Gorgons and chopping off the head of Medusa , the only mortal among the Gorgons, with Hyginus arguing that it could hardly the helmet of the god of the dead, which a mere mortal wore, rather it must have been a quite ordinary cap that made it invisible. According to others, he is said to have received the cap from the Graians who showed him the way to the Stygian nymphs, or from the nymphs who showed him the way to the Graians.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Bibliotheke of Apollodor 1.6-7
  2. Suda , keyword ᾍδου κυνῆν , Adler number: alpha 510 , Suda-Online ; refers to Suda , keyword Κυνέη , Adler number: kappa 2698 , Suda-Online
  3. Homer Iliad 5,844-845
  4. ^ Hyginus De astronomia 2.12
  5. Libraries of Apollodorus 2.4.2
  6. ^ Karl Kerényi : The Heroes of the Greeks. Zurich / Stuttgart 1958, p. 61f