The name Pluto, the god of the underworld, was proposed for a new planet, by Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology. 

 

She suggested it to her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian at the University of Oxford, who passed the name to astronomy professor Herbert Hall Turner, who transmitted it to colleagues in the United States. The name Pluto travelled like a virus… Then, Pluto, with an out-of-kilter orbit, was relegated to being a mere planetoid in a chain of solar system debris, the Kuiper belt…

On this site, one of his other names has been used: Hades (also referring to his kingdom). Pluto — Dis, Hades, Orcus, Aïdoneus — depending on the country of origin — was appointed by the other gods as the keeper of the dead and of riches, as precious minerals are found deep in the earth. The son of Cronus and Rhea, Pluto inspired great fear amongst men who prayed to never see his face, especially when digging for gold. Once in Pluto’s realm, one could never get out, unless your name was Dante… 

In this time of Covfefe and Covid19, the world we know is slowly sliding towards the shithouses of Hades:

"To the shades you go down-hill, easy way ;
But to return and re-enjoy the day,
This is a work, a labour!”

                     Virgil


To the ancients, Hades was a complex world of various levels of joy and pain, with rivers of tears from criminals condemned to hard labour in Tartarus, the place reserved for the wicked. Everyone went to Pluto’s domain. No heaven in the sky, but a final destination for the living where one remembered nothing.

“Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her wat’ry labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.”

                            Milton


Three women (of course) gods, the Furies, drove the dead with lashes from their whips, to the gates of Tartarus. Where's Bettina to defend the men, when you need one? No pity, but hard hearts and mercilessness — as the avengers of crimes on the surface of earth as well. Remember Charlie’s Angels… Should you be a crook, you would eventually get one of their high-heel boots in your throat. Nemesis was the goddess of revenge. Heaven can wait.

Now, in our world of fairness and sharing (please, don’t snigger), it appears we’re all sinners and being punished... We have to share the burden of dealing with the Covfefe Covid19 infection together. We are closing the borders, we have run out of toilet paper — and may the hoarders of such, perish by being struck by Nemesis. Already our own nemesis, Peter Dutton has promised to these uncouth people to be hit by a ton of bricks. We are in good hands, even if we get suspicious of everyone, including our friends, but especially of the governments, though some journos sing the Scomo praises, like an Angelus.

So, our economy is going down the gurgler. As Virgil said: "But to return and re-enjoy the day, This is a work, a labour!” It’s going to be a hard road for the living. The rich hit in the hip-pocket will survive nonetheless in their tax-less “heavens", while the poor will need more hand-outs… Both classes will be resented by the misering middle-bourgeois who, by a stroke of hard-working luck, managed to keep the wheel of the treadmill going — infecting more waiters and actors in Newtown (or Venice) than ducks in the ponds of Centennial Park(Lands), by keeping the rent of shops and cafés as high a possible. Our Prime ad-Minister, Scott Morrison — advertising guru with a so-so resumé of having being sacked for being crap — loved by the rich and despised by the poor, will solve this Covfefe-Covid19 event with the skills of a Moses parting the waters of the Styx — the river of tears. There is going to be plenty of that.

We already had our hell in the bushfires, we have had our floods (so fierce, even Noah and his family of evolved monkeys would have drowned), we’ve have had our banking GFC fiddles that showed the ruthlessness of the dark value of money — and now we’re hit with an opportunistic virus. With no intent to kill us, this thingy does it by its own accidental evolution from the wild into the human psyche. 

As Italy, the land of the god Pluto and of hundreds of NATO bases, surpasses the trauma of the cradle of the Coronavirus, China, we can only fear everything and everyone. In Australia, we’ll be saved by using the famous Aussie salute (used to chase flies and greet sweaty visitors) instead of shaking hands alla Americano or Europeanly kissing men. 

Good luck in your isolation or quarantine.

       “Where his decrees
The guilty souls within the burning gates
Of Tartanus compel, or send the good
To inhabit, with eternal health and peace,
The valley of Elysium.”

                           Akenside