flowed through Tartarus<\/strong> and from which the rivers Styx and Cocytus came.<\/p>\nAcheron was also the name of the river god; the son of Helios (the sun god) and either Demeter or Gaia. According to Greek mythology, Acheron was transformed into an Underworld river<\/strong> after giving the Titans water to drink during their war with the Olympian gods.<\/p>\nFunctions of River Acheron<\/h3>\n
Some ancient Greek myths also narrate that Acheron was the river on which the souls of the departed were transported<\/strong> by the minor god Charon. The 10th Century Byzantine encyclopedia, Suda, described the river as a place of healing, cleansing, and the purging of sins. According to the Greek philosopher Plato, the Acheron was a windy river<\/strong> where the souls went to await an appointed time after which they came back to earth as animals.<\/p>\nCurrently, a river that flows in the Epirus region in Greece is named after the infernal river,<\/strong> Acheron. The Acheron flows from the village of Zotiko into the Ionian sea at a small fishing village known as Ammoudia.<\/p>\nSome ancient Greek writers used Acheron as a synecdoche for Hades thus the Acheron river came to represent the Underworld. According to Plato, Acheron was the most incredible river<\/strong> among the rivers of the Underworld Greek mythology.<\/p>\nThe River Phlegethon<\/h2>\n
The Phlegethon<\/strong> was known as the river of fire, with Plato describing it as a stream of fire that flowed around the earth and ended in the bowels of Tartarus. According to legend, the goddess Styx fell in love with Phlegethon but she died when she came into contact with his fiery flames.<\/strong><\/p>\nTo reunite her with the love of her life, Hades allowed her river to flow parallel to that of Phlegethon. The Italian poet Dante wrote in his book Inferno, that Phlegethon was a river of blood that boils souls.<\/strong><\/p>\nFunctions of Phlegethon<\/h3>\n
According to Dante’s Inferno, the river is situated in the Seventh Circle of Hell<\/strong> and is used as a punishment for souls who committed grievous crimes while they were alive. The lot includes murderers, tyrants, robbers, blasphemers, greedy money lenders and sodomites. Depending on the grievous nature of the crime committed, each soul was assigned a specific level in the boiling river of fire.<\/strong> Souls who tried to rise above their level were shot at by centaurs who patrolled the borders of Phlegethon.<\/p>\nEnglish poet Edmund Spenser also reiterated Dante’s version of Phlegethon in his poem The Faerie Queene which told of a fiery flood that fried damned souls in Hell.<\/strong> The river also served as a prison for the Titans after they were defeated and overthrown by the Olympians.<\/p>\nIn one of the Persephone myths, Ascalaphus, the guardian of the Hades garden,<\/strong> reported Persephone for eating the forbidden pomegranates. Thus, she was punished to spend four months of each year with Hades.<\/p>\nTo punish Ascalaphus, Persephone sprinkled the Phlegethon on him, turning him into a screech owl.<\/strong> Other writers such as Plato felt that the river was the source of volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\nThe River Cocytus<\/h2>\n
Cocytus<\/strong> was known as the river of lamentation or wailing and it was believed to have its source from the Styx and flowed into the Acheron in Hades. Dante described the Cocytus as the ninth and last circle of Hell,<\/strong> referring to it as a frozen lake instead of a river. The reason was that Satan or Lucifer turned the river into ice by flapping his wings.<\/p>\nFunctions of the Cocytus River<\/h3>\n
According to Dante, the river had four descending rounds, and souls were sent there depending on the type of crime they committed. Caina was the first round, named after Cain in the Bible and it was reserved for traitors to relatives.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe next was Antenora, representing Antenor of the Iliad,<\/strong> who betrayed his country. Ptolomea was the third round which symbolized the governor of Jericho, Ptolemy, who killed his guests; thus traitors to guests were sent there.<\/p>\nThen the last round was named Judecca, after Judas Iscariot, and was meant for people who betrayed their masters or benefactors. The banks of the Cocytus river was home to souls who did not receive a proper burial<\/strong> and thus served as their wandering grounds.<\/p>\nSummary:<\/h2>\n
So far, we’ve studied the five water bodies in the Underworld and their functions. Here is a summary<\/strong> of all that we’ve discovered:<\/p>\n\n- According to Greek mythology, there were five rivers in the domain of Hades, each with its function.<\/li>\n
- The rivers were Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Phlegethon and Cocytus and their deities.<\/li>\n
- Both Acheron and Styx served as boundaries between the world of the living and the dead while Phlegethon and Cocytus were used to punish evildoers.<\/li>\n
- Lethe, on the other hand, symbolized forgetfulness and the dead were required to drink from it to forget their past.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
All the rivers played significant roles in ensuring that the damned souls<\/strong> paid for their deeds and their mythologies served as a caution to the living to desist from evil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rivers of the Underworld were believed to be in the earth’s bowels in the domain of Hades, the god of the Underworld. Each river had unique characteristics, and each personified an emotion or a deity after which they were named. The Underworld, in Greek mythology, was a physical place that had the Asphodel meadows,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2051],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22164"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23149,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22164\/revisions\/23149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ancient-literature.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}