Hades was the Greek god of the underworld. He presided over funeral rites and defended the right of the dead to due burial. He was the son of Cronus and Rhea and the last of his siblings to be regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the air, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, the province of Gaia, available to all three concurrently. Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus and associated with the Helm of Darkness and the bident - a two pronged implement similar to a pitchfork. Hades, as the god of the dead, was a fearsome figure to those still living; but it helps to remember though that while Hades embodied the inexorable finality of death, he was not an evil god, for although he was stern, cruel, and unpitying, he was still just and he was not Death itself.