LATIN DICTIONARYLexicon Latīnum
Academy · Biography & Mythology

Plutus

Πλοῦτος

(Πλοῦτος), sometimes also called Pluton (Aristoph. Pl. 727), the personification of wealth, is described as a son of Iasion and Demeter (Hes. Th. 969, &c.; Hom. Hymn. in Cer. 491, Od. 5.125). Zeus is said to have blinded him, in order that he might not bestow his favours on righteous men exclusively, but that he might distribute his gifts blindly and without any regard to merit (Aristoph. Pl. 90; Schol. ad Theocrit. 10.19). At Thebes there was a statue of Tyche, at Athens one of Eirene, and at Thespiae one of Athena Ergane; and in each of these cases Plutus was represented as the child of those divinities, symbolically expressing the sources of wealth (Paus. 9.16.1, 26.5). Hyginus (Poet. Astr. 2.4) calls him the brother of Philomelus. He seems to have commonly been represented as a boy with a Cornucopia. (Hirt, Mythol. Bilderb. ii. p. 105, &c.)

From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.