Plutus

"Wealth." Sometimes also called Pluton,1 the personification of wealth, is described as a son of Iasion and Demeter.2 Zeus is said to have blinded him, in order that he might not bestow his favors on righteous men exclusively, but that he might distribute his gifts blindly and without any regard to merit.3

At Thebes there was a statue of Tyche, at Athens one of Eirene, and at Thespiae one of Athena Athena Ergane; and in each of these cases Plutus was represented as the child of those divinities, symbolically expressing the sources of wealth.4

Hyginus5 calls him the brother of Philomelus.

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Iconography

Plutus is usually represented as a youth carrying a cornucopia. A marble group by Cephisodotus (ca. 375 BCE), of which a copy exists in Munich, shows Eirene carrying the infant Plutus on her arm.

References

Notes

  1. Aristophanes. Plutus, 727.
  2. Hesiod. Theogony, 969 ff.; Homer. Hymn to Demeter, 491; Odyssey v, 125.
  3. Aristophanes. Plutus, 90; Scholiast on Theocritus, x, 19.
  4. Pausanias. Description of Greece ix, 16.1, 26.5.
  5. Poetical Astronomy ii, 4.

Sources

  • Aken, Dr. A.R.A. van. (1961). Elseviers Mythologische Encyclopedie. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.