The most exalted name we met with among these dwellers below the earth is that of Zeus Chthonios. This is at once the most general and the most exclusive designation of the god of the lower world; for the name "Zeus" had in many local cults thus preserved the generalized meaning of "god" in combination with a particularizing adjective. The Iliad also once speaks of "Zeus of the lower world"; though by this is meant none other than the ruler of the distant realm of the dead, Hades. Hades too, in the Hesiodic Theogony is once called "Zeus the Chthonian".[2\5] But the agricultural poem of Hesiod bids the Boeotian countryman, when preparing his fields for sowing, pray for a blessing to the Chthonic Zeus. Zeus Chthonios was also sacrificed to in Mykonos for the "fruits of the earth".[3\5] But, more frequently than under this most general and exalted title,[4\5] we meet with the god of the living and the dead under various disguises. The gods of the underworld were generally referred to by affectionate or cajoling nicknames that laid stress on the lofty or beneficent character of their rule and threw a veil over the darkest side of their nature with conciliatory euphemism.[5\5] Thus Hades had many flattering titles and special names.[6\5] So, too, in many places Zeus of the underworld was worshipped as Zeus Eubouleus or Bouleus,[7\5] at other places, especially Hermione, as Klymenos.[8\5] Zeus Amphiaraos, Zeus Trophonios we have dealt with already in their capacity of Heroes, but they are really nothing else but such earth deities with honourable titles, who have been deprived to some extent of their full status as gods[9\5] and have on that account developed all the more strongly the oracular side of their powers. Hades, the ruler of that distant kingdom of darkness, is one of this class of manifestations of Zeus Chthonios that vary in name according to the different localities of their worship. The king of the shadows in Erebos as he appears in Homer has no altars or sacrifices made to him[10\5]; but these things belong to him as the local god of particular places. In the Peloponnese there were local centres {160} of his worship in Elis and Triphylia,[11\5] sites of a very ancient civilization; and it is probable enough that tribes and clans having their origin there contributed by their wanderings to the spread of their native cult of the chthonic deity in other Greek countries as well.[12\5] Hades, too, was for his Peloponnesian worshippers a god of the fertility of the earth just as much as a god of the dead.[13\5] And in the same way he was the lord of the Souls as well, in those places where "in fear of the name of Hades"[14\5] he was called, in honour of his beneficent powers, Plouton, Plouteus, or Zeus Plouteus.