Hades

In Homer the underworld is called the House of Hades, and the god is everywhere implied, the absent landlord whose halls Odysseus walks through to find Tiresias. He does not appear in person there either, but his name is constantly invoked. In this retelling he is left unnamed. The retelling keeps the divine cast tight, and the underworld chapters do their work through atmosphere, through the blood pit and the hungry shades and Persephone’s distant power, rather than through naming the king. The territory speaks louder than the title. Hades belongs to the source material as the silent owner of every shade Odysseus meets, the husband of Persephone, the third brother who drew the dead world when Zeus drew the sky and Poseidon drew the sea.