The Seba library treats Ploutos in 7 passages, across 4 authors (including Harrison, Jane Ellen, Kerényi, Karl, Campbell, Joseph).
Like the child in the cornucopia he 7s Wealth, Ploutos. Beginning as a child in the religion of Mother and Son, he ends in later patriarchal days as a white-haired old man.
Harrison argues that Ploutos is not merely associated with wealth but structurally identical with the Earth-Mother’s Son, tracing his devolution from divine infant to senescent figure as a marker of patriarchal religious displacement.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
Demeter gave herself to him in the furrows of a thrice-ploughed field. The goddess bore him the child Ploutos (‘Wealth’), and the earth thereupon brought forth a manifold harvest.
Kerenyi presents the canonical mythological account of Ploutos’ birth from Demeter’s union with Iasion, establishing the figure’s essential identity as the generative product of earth and erotic union.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
They will readily send him Ploutos, the god of wealth, into his palace, to be for him a guest who bestows riches upon mortal men.
Kerenyi, drawing on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, presents Ploutos as a benefaction dispatched by the Eleusinian goddesses to the initiated, functioning as divine abundance made personal and domestic.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951supporting
the goddess of the Eleusinian mysteries, Demeter, is seen with her divine child Ploutos, or Plutus (not the same as Plouton or Pluto, god of the netherworld, though frequently identified with him by assimi
Campbell explicitly distinguishes Ploutos from Plouton while confirming Ploutos’ iconographic role as Demeter’s divine child in the Eleusinian mysteries, underscoring his identity as chthonic wealth rather than death.
, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964supporting
near akin to Eirene who nurtured the child Ploutos, come out very clearly in this chorus.
Harrison identifies Ploutos as a child nurtured by Eirene (Peace), situating him within a cluster of beneficent communal daimones whose nurturing functions reflect the social and ritual matrix of seasonal abundance.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
Tyche, the Goddess of Good Fortune, who appears with a boy-child (sometimes named Ploutos), holding what has generally been read as a cornucopia of ‘fertility.’
Hillman notes Ploutos’ appearance as Tyche’s boy-child within a phallic-luck complex, linking the figure to puer-consciousness, erotic good fortune, and the intertwining of priapic and cornucopial symbolism.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
with thee is the bringer of good, the angel standing by the side for Tyche. Therefore give thou means and accomplishment to this house, thou who rulest over hope, wealth-giving Aion.
A magical papyrus prayer associating wealth-giving power with Aion and Tyche gestures toward the broader cultic milieu in which Ploutos circulated as a personification of beneficent abundance.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside