"Let him then yieldit is only Hades who is utterly ruthless and unyielding- and hence he is of all gods the one most hateful to mankind."
"Let him yield—Hades, I ween, is not to be soothed, neither overcome, wherefore he is most hated by mortals of all gods."
Two translations of the same line from the Iliad (book nine, verse 158-9).
The funny thing is, despite TVTropes's insistence that Hades was the white sheep of the Greek pantheon... he's never alluded to be a good guy anywhere. The few times he's mentionned in epic poems, it's generally what you would expect from a god of the underworld in ancient mythologies : " you don't want to meet that guy ". Which isn't really surprising, considering that... he's the god of "the end", and most people don't really want to talk or think about the little fact that, one day, they will die. The only myth centered about him [1] is the rape of Persephone, who's kidnapped into the underworld and then kept here thanks to some rule-lawyering from his gardener.
The fact that it's interpreted today by pop-culture as an act of love or a forgivable mistake is somewhat funny.
On the other hand, Zeus... is your standard "sky father/thunder-wielding protector of mankind" template. He's the guy that you want as your god when it's time to preserve social customs, to honor contracts and bring justice, to protect your city against plagues and mad kings. He's certainly an adultered, but none of the four "main" epic poems (the Theogony, Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid) has anything bad to say about him : big Z. is here to help heroes and be a just figure to acknowledge their feats. Even outside of those texts, he's rarely (if ever) depicted in a bad light : wheter he's here to punish Lykaon and Sisyphus, give his foresight to Tiresias as an indemnity for Hera's temper tantrum, etc... He's not a guy that you don't want to meet, except if you're wicked yourself.
... Sorry for the rant, uh. It's a little out of place here. ._.
[1] That we know of. Sadly, our knowledge of greco-romans myths isn't exhaustive. It's just extensive enough that we
think we aren't missing that much. For all we know, there was more myths about Hades being an ennemy of mankind... and even more myths about Zeus being a good guy.
