Was Plutus the son of Pluto and Proserpina?

Question

There are so many different answers to the "Who were Hades/Pluto and Persephone/Prosperina children?" question that I'm not sure if they even had children together at all anymore.

One person on a mythological website said Hades was sterile.

Wikipedia has The Erinyes listed in the children category but the history linked to them counters that. Describing them as older than the Olympians. Then there are:

• Zagreus, who might be the actual son of Zeus when he may or may not have shifted into a snake and crawled into her cave bed when she was a virgin (before marrying Hades?).

• Melinoë who might also be Zeus's child when he disguised himself as Hades and lay with Proserpina. Or, she might actually be Hades' because some said, "Zeus and Hades are essentially two representations and different facets of the same god." So, she might really be his daughter with Persephone?

• Macaria who seems to definitely have been Hades daughter but apparently no mother is mentioned.

• Then there is Plutus (Ploutos), who seems to be Plutus (no apparent name change) regardless of Greek or Roman mythology.

  Wikipedia says he is either Demeter's son with Iasion OR Pluto and Persephone (they also used his (Hades/Pluto) Roman name, with her Greek name together, which I also found odd and confusing.

Was Plutus the son of Pluto and Proserpina?

Answer 1

There are a lot of holes in what we know about the mythology surrounding Pluto/Hades and Persephone. We have traces of several traditions regarding their relationship and possible offspring, and they don't always jive with each other, as you've already seen.

Here are some various other traditions I've found in the sources I have at hand:

• In the Aeneid, Virgil claims Pluto is the father of Allecto.

• Melinoë is indeed described (usually) as the daughter of Zeus and Persephone. Confusion arises because here Zeus is identified with his "chthonic" form, and it's unclear whether "chthonic Zeus" is the same figure as Pluto. There was seemingly more than one tradition regarding this identification, and presently "Zeus in disguise" seems more prevalent to me.

• According to the Theogony and the Odyssey, Ploutos/Plutus is the child of Demeter and Iasion.

• (Finally, although I can't for the life of me find the reference right now, I'm positive I read recently that one source had Persephone as the sterile one instead!)

Regarding your last item, the Greeks used the name "Pluto" as well as "Hades"; it's not strictly a Roman counterpart to the name "Hades" the way we all were taught in school. To the Greeks, Hades and Pluto were somewhat different aspects of the same figure. You can see an example of this in Apollodorus' Library, where both names are employeed depending on the context, and in the Iliad, when Homer notes the deity's dual associations as both a god of the underworld and a god of wealth.