Harrowing of Hell refers not merely to the idea that Christ descended into Hell, as in the Creed, but to the rich tradition that developed later, asserting that he triumphed over "inferos", releasing Hell's captives, particularly Adam and Eve, and the righteous men and women of the Old Testament period. In Classical mythology Hades is the underworld inhabited by departed souls and the god Pluto is its ruler. The New Testament uses the term "Hades" to refer to the abode or state of the dead. In some places it seems to represent a neutral place where the dead awaited the death, burial, and
Pluto (mythology) the classical underworld with Hell, and its denizens as demons or devils. In the Renaissance, the bident became a conventional attribute of Pluto. In an influential ceiling mural depicting the wedding of Cupid and Psyche, painted by Raphael's workshop for the Villa Farnesina in 1517, Pluto is shown holding the bident, with Cerberus at his side, while Neptune holds the trident. Perhaps influenced by this work, Agostino Carracci originally depicted Pluto with a bident in a preparatory drawing for his painting "Pluto" (1592), in which the god ended up holding his characteristic key. In Caravaggio's "Giove, Nettuno e Plutone" (ca.