The Seba library treats Aidoneus in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Hillman, James, Kerényi, Karl, Onians, R B).
The word eidolon relates with Hades himself (aidoneus) and with eidos, ideational forms and shapes, the ideas that form and shape life, but are so buried in it that we only ‘see’ them when pulled out in abstractions.
Hillman derives the psychological significance of Aidoneus from its root connection to eidolon and eidos, making the god’s name the etymological ground for a depth-psychological theory of image and invisible form.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979thesis
Hades is the most recent form of his name, an older form was Aides, or Aidoneus, and a still older form was Ais, which was preserved only in connection with the word for ‘house’ or ‘palace’. The meaning of Ais, Aides or Hades is most probably ‘the invisible’ or the ‘invisibility-giving’, in contrast with Helios.
Kerényi establishes the philological lineage of Aidoneus, tracing the name’s archaic forms and grounding its meaning in the concept of invisibility as structural contrast to solar visibility.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
A Greek epitaph (from Rome) consists of the wish: ‘May Aidoneus, lord of those below, give thee cold water, for thou didst lose the dear flower of youth.’
Onians recovers a funerary invocation of Aidoneus as sovereign of the underworld who may bestow the merciful gift of cool water, illustrating popular eschatological use of the name in the context of soul-belief.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
In the country of the Eleusinians the divine daughter of Demeter, after being carried down to the lower world by Aidoneus, came up once more to the light of day, and was restored to her mother.
Rohde situates Aidoneus as the abductor in the Persephone myth and thereby as the necessary antagonist whose act inaugurates the soteriological drama central to the Eleusinian Mysteries.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
The heroes of these stories have their everlasting existence in special abodes under the surface of the earth, in subterranean chambers — not in the common meeting place of the departed; they each have their own peculiar domain far from the House of Aidoneus.
Rohde uses ‘the House of Aidoneus’ as the normative Homeric designation of the communal underworld realm, against which exceptional subterranean heroic existence is defined as deviant and individual.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
Aidoneus (Pluto), 145, 289, 296; gives Persephone pomegranate seed, 316
An index entry in the Hesiodic corpus equates Aidoneus with Pluto and identifies his mythological act of giving Persephone the pomegranate seed, fixing his role in the abduction narrative.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside