Pluto / Dis Pater

Roman tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
the underworld, wealth
Parents (per the sources used)
Saturn and Ops
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.

Key myth

Ruler of the dead. Dis Pater ('wealthy father') was the Roman name before Pluto, a Latinised Greek name, entered use.

Greek counterpart: Hades on thegreekgods.org. Roman and Greek versions share names and stories in many places but began as different cults.

Primary sources

  • Cicero, De natura deorum II.66

All sources for the Roman pantheon

Lineage in the sources used: Saturn, Ops.

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

SaturnOpsJanusJupiterJunoNeptunePluto / Dis PaterCeresVestaQuirinusMinervaApolloDianaMercuryBacchus / LiberMarsVulcanVenus

More traditions

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Pluto / Dis Pater: death and the underworld, earth, harvest and fertility. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Odin

wisdom, poetry, war

Norse

Sif

golden hair, grain (by later reading)

Norse

Baldr

light, beauty, mercy

Norse

Hel

the dead who die of sickness or age

Norse

Freyr

peace, fertility, sunshine

Norse

Freyja

love, desire, magic (seiðr)

Norse

Rán

drowning, the sea's net

Egyptian

Geb

earth

Compare across cultures