The Five Rivers of the Ancient Greek Underworld

 

 

The ancient Greeks believed that existence does not end with death; there is no death, only a transition from one state of being to another; every human died only to live again on another level of existence.

This other level of existence was said to have been the Underworld, the realm of the dead, ruled over by Hades, god of the underworld and his wife, Persephone, goddess of the dead.

 

 

The ancient Greek Underworld was surrounded by five rivers, departed souls were carried across one of these rivers, actually the Acheron but today’s stories tell us it was the  the Styx, by the ferryman Charon, whom they paid with coin carried under their under their tongue.

Upon their arrival the souls were taken before the three judges of the dead.

The judges would decide their final destination in the Underworld, which was divided into three regions; Elysium, a paradise for heroes, the Asphodel Fields, for ordinary souls and Tartarus, a place of eternal punishment for the wicked.

 

The Five Rivers of the Underworld

 

 

In Ancient Greece, water was the most widely worshipped element, for without water there would be no life.

 As a result every source of water was said to have a deity associated with it.

Even though every river had a deity associated with it, the most famous rivers of Ancient Greece were not found within Greece, but were instead located in the underworld.

The five rivers of the Underworld had their own specific mission and each represented a separate emotion related to death; Acheron, River of pain, Styx, river of hate, Lethe, river of forgetfulness, Cocytus, river of Wailing and Phlegethon, river of fire.

Each river connects to something important – fire, promises, pain, sadness, and forgetting and this helps us understand how the Greeks thought about death, fairness and life starting over.

However, as it is with most myths, which have been passed down by word of mouth, the Stories associated with the five interconnected rivers surrounding the ancient Greek Underworld often differ.

For instance, historical documents or archives, such as the ancient Roman poet, Virgil’s account  of the five rivers of the Underworld in his work, “Aeneid”, differ from the accounts given by both the ancient Greek poet Homer and philosopher, Plato.

The five infernal Rivers crop up in the works of many esteemed authors, including Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Hesiod, Ovid and Shakespeare.

 

1. Acheron

 The River of Pain or Woe and Misery

 

 

The River Acheron, the river of pain, is so called as it is said to be the entrance to the Greek underworld and the start of the journey from life to death, which meant leaving former lives behind.

(The Acheron is mentioned both as a lake and a river)

In ancient times, the River Acheron was the most important of the five rivers of the Underworld, and it was this river, not the Styx, that Charon, the ferryman, took them across its waters. It is the start of the journey from life to death.

In Greek mythology, the dead were accompanied to the river bank by Hermes Psychopomp, the herdsman of souls, who handed them over to Charon, the ferryman, who, after being paid with a coin that the dead had been buried with, transported them over the river, to the Underworld.

 

The Necromanteion of Acheron

Ephyra – Epirus – Greece

 

 

There is an actual real-life River Acheron, in the real word.

The river’s source is located near the village Zotiko, in the southwestern part Ioannina .

The Acheron flows into the Ionian Sea in Ammoudia, near Parga.

On the banks of the River Acheron, near Ephyra, at the point where three of the five rivers of the underworld meet, sometime around the third or fourth century BC, was built a temple dedicated to the god and goddess of the underworld, Hades and Persephone.

This was a temple of necromancy (a form of divination or magic that involves communicating with the dead),  a necromanteion , said to be the entrance to Hades, the Underworld, which, once their bodies had decayed in the earth and their spirits released, was the final resting place of the dead.

 

 

Ceremonies held at the temple involved eating special food, such as beans, pork and barley bread, ingesting or inhaling narcotic potions as sheep were sacrificed, all in the belief that this would greatly help attempts to contact and converse with dead spirits.

Thousands of years after the destruction of the temple (167 BC), a monastery, dedicated to Saint John The Baptist, was built on the site.

Many ancient temples throughout Europe practised necromancy but The Necromanteion of Acheron, Ephyra in Greece was the most famous.

 

2. The Styx

 The River of Hate

 

 

 The River Styx, which symbolizes hate and separation, is considered a river of punishment.

 It is said to circle around the Underworld seven times, separating it from the land of the living.

Its waters were even feared by the gods, as the river’s waters were known to destroy anyone and anything.

Nevertheless, it is these waters that the nymph Thetis dipped her son Achilles in, holding him by the heel, to make him invincible.

The only part of his body not to be touched by the waters of the Styx was his heel, which remained vulnerable.

From this story comes the saying “Achilles Heel”

 

 

Herodotus, the ancient Greek story teller, has it that the river originated near Corinth, however, Hesiod tells us that it also refers to the Arcadian Styx in the Peloponnese and Roman poet Virgil, states that  the River Styx sprang from Acheron, the main river of Tartarus.

Still others have the Styx flowing out of Oceanus, the greatest river of the world.

The goddess Styx, as one of the Titans, the gods who came before the Olympians, represented oaths.

Breaking an oath tied to Styx led to severe punishment for both gods and mortals.

Even though her name means “hatred” or “disgust”, Styx is a symbol of justice, loyalty, and the unchanging reality of life, death, and divine promises.

 

3. Lethe

The River of Forgetfulness

 

 

Drinking from this river, which takes its name from the ancient Greek word for oblivion and forgetfulness, was said to erase all memories.

This allowed dead souls to erase their memories, before being reincarnated, so that they would not remember their past lives, which meant they could start afresh in the Underworld.

The Roman poet Ovid stated that the river flowed through the cave of Hypnos, god of sleep, where it’s whispering ripples invoked drowsiness.

Other sources have the river Lethe located next to Hades’s palace (The king of the Underworld), under a cypress tree.

Then again it is also said that Orpheus would give some of the deceased souls a password which allowed them to drink from the Mnemosyne (the pool of memory), and that was located under a poplar tree!

This ties in with an Orphic inscription engraved on an ancient pendent found in Southern Italy (now at the British Museum), warning the wearer not to drink from the River Lethe but instead search for the waters of Mnemosyne, the Pool of Memory.

Some tomb inscriptions dated to 400 B.C.E. say the dead could retain their memories by not drinking from the Lethe and drinking instead from the stream flowing from the lake of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the muses

Lethe is also the name of the goddess of forgetfulness who watched over the River Lethe.

Lethe was first mentioned as a river of the underworld in Plato’s “Republic.”

 

4. Cocytus

The River of Wailing

 

 

Cocytus, the River of Wailing, or the River of tears, meaning extreme grief, was associated with those who had received merciless punishment and echoes with the wails and screams of damned souls.

 Any of the departed souls who had committed murder was thrown into the River Cocytus (apart from the ones who had committed matricide or patricide, they were thrown into the River Phlegethon.

 

 

According to Homer, the ancient Greek story teller, Phlegethon, the River of Fire, ran parallel to Cocytus, and the two rivers merged in a raging waterfall that fell into Acheron.

Charon, the ferryman, refused to row anyone across the river who had not had not received a traditional burial and for anyone not taken across to Phlegethon, the banks of the Cocytus became their wandering ground for all eternity.

Like the Phlegethon, the River Cocytus was said to be a river flowing through Taratrus, the place in the Underword where all bad people end up.

 

 

5. River Pyriphlegethon

The River of Fire

 

 

The River Phlegethon is called the River of Fire because it is said to travel to the depths of the Underworld where land is filled with fire, especially the flames of funeral pyres.

Fire from the Phlegethon symbolizes destruction, cleansing and eternal suffering for those who defy divine law.

Phlegethon, said to flow near Tartarus, the deepest part of the Underworld, where the worst souls are punished endlessly in its flames, where the dead are judged and where the prison of the Titans is located.

 

 

The River of Fire is associated with punishment, purification, and renewal; any dead who had committed matricide or patricide were thrown into the flames of Phlegethon.

Plato describes Phlegethon as “a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus while the soil on its banks turns to burning clay where it meets the waters”.

The myth of Phlegethon inspired both Dante in his “Inferno” and Edgar Allan Poe in his Descent into the Maelstrom.

 

Fun Fact

Don’t Forget Your Passport!

 

 

I’ll leave you with a fun fact; if you thought passports were a thing of the modern world, think again.

 The ancient Greeks were way ahead; they actually used passports, made of gold, to ensure entry into paradise, Elysium as it was called back then.

These “passports to the afterlife”, small sheets of thin gold were called lamellae in Latin, and date back to the fourth and third centuries BC.

They are inscribed with the holder’s identity and good qualities, along with instructions of how to conduct yourself once you had gained entry, were buried along with the deceased.

Around thirty to forty of these lamellae have been discovered at gravesites from the island of Crete, to the mainland region of Thessaly in northern Greece and Magna Graecia; a region of coastal Southern Italy colonized by the Ancient Greeks.

Next time you leave home, don’t forget to take your golden passport with you, you never know, accidents can happen in the blink of an eye; be prepared, you don’t want to end up in godforsaken Tartarus!

 

Related Post:

The Journey to the Ancient Greek Underworld