The cast’s reaction to learning they would be filming inside an actual tomb somehow makes it into the final film.
Episode 77: In which Hades learns what movies and archaeologists are, and young Prince Charles crawls around an Etruscan tomb.
This cross-over episode of Real Housewives of Hades (a Mt. Olympus spin-off) and Real Housewives of Mt. Olympus brought to you by the latest archaeological news on…EntertainmentWeekly.com (?!…checks notes…yes, that’s correct!) – and by CLAS-B 312 Plague, Disasters and Death in the Ancient World.
[SETTING: Breakfast in Hades Palace in the Underworld]
PERSEPHONE, QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD AND RELUCTANT WIFE OF HADES: Did you see the latest mortal news? My mom sent a scroll down with Hermes yesterday. I left it on the table for you.
HADES, KING OF THE UNDERWORLD AND OVERLY-ENTHUSIASTIC HUSBAND OF PERSEPHONE: I don’t see it. (gestures to THESEUS, KING OF ATHENS AND SLAYER OF THE MINOTAUR and PIRITHOUS, KING OF THE LAPITHS AND ROBIN TO THESEUS’ BATMAN) Did one of you mortal chucklebums take my scroll?
THESEUS: (clearly terrified) Um, I borrowed it just to read it, Sir. It’s just that it gets really boring, being stuck at your breakfast table for all eternity…
HADES: Well, you should have thought of that before you tried to steal my wife.
PIRITHOUS: We should have anticipated that you would magically glue our bums to our seats, and brought along an eternity’s worth of light reading material with us, just in case?
HADES: Hey, we’re Ancient Greek gods. We wear our crazy on our tunic sleeves. You should be prepared for anything and everything. Now give me the scroll or I’ll set your tunics on fire.
Hera turned the prophet Tiresias into a woman, after he struck two copulating snakes. Because sometimes Greek myths read like Mad Libs.
PERSEPHONE: That’s ok, I remember what it says. No need to burn down a perfectly good bench. Apparently the mortals have made something called “a movie.” It’s like an ancient play, but on a scroll, so you can watch it all over the world.
HADES: All ancient plays were written and circulated on scrolls.
PERSEPHONE: Right, but this is like if the actors and their performances were in the scroll, and then somehow you watch it instead of read it. Anyway, this movie imagines that a modern archaeologist uses an Etruscan tomb to travel to our Realm of the Dead.
HADES: What’s an archaeologist?
PERSEPHONE: They’re those people Aunt Hera calls “artifact farmers.” Apparently they’re just obsessed with other people’s tombs. Always digging them up, crawling around in them, really weird when you think about it.
HADES: Maybe the artifact farmers don’t understand how the system works. Put a dead person in a tomb, the soul comes down here. Put a living person in, nothing happens. It’s a nifty safety feature Hephaestus designed. Even these two bumble-brained bench buddies know that if living mortals want to come down here like they did, they have to take the long route and go through one of the approved entrances. Your artifact farmers sound like idiots.
PERSEPHONE: Again, like my mom keeps telling Aunt Hera, the artifact farmers are called archaeologists. And I think the “going to our realm” thing is part of the actors pretending.
HADES: Oh, so the actors are crawling around fake tombs. The way you phrased it, I thought these actors were crawling around inside actual Etruscan tombs. Can you imagine?
PERSEPHONE: Actually, I was talking about real tombs for both archaeologists and the actors in this movie. In the mortal news, an actor goes on and on about how there are all of these Etruscan tombs just lying about, and how cool it was to put on a play inside of a tomb and see all the beautiful ancient paintings.
Agamemnon, Achilles, and Tiresias (again!) stand around the Realm of the Dead, waiting for Odysseus to show up, while tiny people do parkour on cattails. Because sometimes Etruscan tomb paintings read like Mad Libs.
HADES: What. The. Me. These actors went into a real ancient tomb, just so they could play make believe? Don’t they realize how important burial rituals were to ancient people? Their whole eternity depended on people treating their remains with respect.
PERSEPHONE: I mean, you made those rules up. You could just let people in here, regardless of their burials.
HADES: I could do a lot of things. Going easy on mortals is not one of them.
PERSEPHONE: Now that you mention it, the actors did know how important burial was, because in the interview this guy goes on and on about Etruscan burial beliefs, how the Etruscans spent more time building tombs than houses, and how it was so important for the Etruscans to take goods with them into the afterlife.
HADES: What is he talking about? Even I don’t know what the Etruscans believed about the afterlife. They’re always wandering around, moaning in that bizarre language they speak. I can’t understand a word. Can the mortals today even read Etruscan?
PERSEPHONE: Not much, I’d imagine. Etruscan isn’t clearly related to any modern or ancient language, which makes it really difficult to decipher. And most Etruscan towns are still buried under modern towns, so I don’t know how that actor would have any idea about how much Etruscans spent on their houses. So come to think of it, really this actor was just crawling around in an ancient tomb, making stuff up.
HADES: And that’s diffferent from what archaeologists do?
PERSEPHONE: (shrugs)
Screen legend Isabella Rossellini and that dude who played Prince Charles on the Crown star in a movie where they filmed inside actual Etruscan tombs. Because sometimes movie summaries read like Mad Libs.
HADES: This all sounds smitable. Maybe I’ll put a curse on them where they can speak only Etruscan.
PERSEPHONE: Can you do that?
HADES: Never know until I try. That’s why I keep these two boneheads here, for smiting experimentation (THESEUS and PIRITHOUS shudder).
PERSEPHONE: You can’t figure out how to release them from that bench, can you?
HADES: No, no I cannot.
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To learn more about how important burial rites were to the ancient Mediterraneans—and why that makes it so, so weird that we crawl around in their tombs—enroll in our 1-credit “appetizer” course CLAS-B 312 Plague, Disasters and Death in the Ancient World, coming in the first-third of Fall 2024 with no pre-reqs! Or to learn more about how crazy the Ancient Greek gods were, join us in CLAS-C 205 Classical Mythology, also coming up Fall 2024, and earn GEC credits while you’re at it!. While you’re waiting, make sure to check back for more adventures of Hades and Persephone. Can’t get enough of Ancient Greece and Rome? Earn a Classics Minor in just 15 credits!
