Acheron

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article concerns the Greek river. For other uses, see Acheron (disambiguation).

The Greek Underworld
Residents:
Persephone Hades Minos Aeacus	Rhadamanthys Charon Cerberus
Geography:
Acheron Cocytus Tartarus Lethe Elysion	Styx Phlegethon Asphodel Meadows Erebus
Famous inmates:
Ixion Sisyphus	Tantalus The Titans
Related:
Greek mythology	Greek religion

The Acheron is located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. Acheron translates as the "river of woe" and it was believed to be a branch of the underworld river Styx over which in ancient Greek mythology Charon ferried the newly dead souls across into Hades.

The lake called Acherousia and the river still called Acheron with the nearby ruins of the Necromanteion are found near Parga on the mainland opposite Corfu.

Another branch of Acheron was believed to surface at the Acherusian cape (now Eregli in Turkey) and was seen by the Argonauts according to Apollonius of Rhodes.

Greeks who settled in Italy identified the Acherusian lake into which Acheron flowed with Lake Avernus.

Plato in his Phaedo identified Acheron as the second greatest river in the world, excelled only by Oceanus. He claimed that Acheron flowed in the opposite direction from Oceanus beneath the earth under desert places.

The word is also occasionally used as a synecdoche for Hades itself.

The god of the river fathered Ascalaphus with Orphne or Gorgyra.

Virgil mentions Acheron with the other infernal rivers in his description of the underworld in Book VI of the Aeneid.

In Dante's Inferno, the Acheron river forms the border of Hell, in the Ante-Inferno. Following Greek mythology, Charon ferries souls across this river to Hell.