Underworld- Greek LocationLocation · Realm"Kingdom of the Dead"

Beneath the Earth

Homer places the Underworld beyond the stream of Oceanus, at the western edge of the world. Hesiod sets it far beneath the earth.

The living entered through caves and lakeshores. At Cape Taenarum in the southern Peloponnese, a cave led to Hades's domain; Heracles dragged Cerberus through it. Lake Avernus near Cumae, with its sulfurous vapors and birdless shores, served as the entrance for Aeneas.

Below these gates lay a country of rivers and meadows, without sunlight. Hades ruled it. He drew the Underworld by lot after the Titans fell, and his brothers took the sky and sea. Persephone shared his throne. The dead walked there in human form, recognizable but diminished. They were shadows of who they had been.

The Crossing

Hermes led the newly dead downward to the river. In Homer it is the Styx, the river of hatred. In Apollodorus it is the Acheron, the river of woe. Charon waited at the bank with his boat. He was old and filthy, but the dead had no choice. The fare was an obol, and the Greeks placed coins in the mouths of their dead for this crossing. Those whose bodies had not received burial, or who lacked the coin, wandered the near bank for a hundred years.

On the far shore Cerberus waited: three heads that wagged for the arriving dead and turned savage on anyone who tried to leave.

Deeper in, other rivers crossed the landscape. The Lethe flowed quietly. A drink from it erased all memory. In Plato's Myth of Er, souls bound for reincarnation drank from the Lethe before returning to the world above, carrying nothing of their former lives.

The Regions of the Dead

Three judges, all former mortal kings, sorted the arriving dead. Most went to the Asphodel Meadows, gray fields where they wandered without purpose or pleasure. In the Odyssey, Achilles tells Odysseus he would rather be a landless laborer serving a poor man than king over all the dead. That was the common afterlife.

Those the gods favored went to Elysium. Homer mentions it only for Menelaus, Zeus's son-in-law. Pindar expanded the promise to the virtuous and describes golden flowers and eternal feasting. Below all this, far below, lay Tartarus. The river Phlegethon, a stream of fire, marked its boundary.

Those Who Returned

The boundary between living and dead was not absolute. A few crossed it twice.

Orpheus descended for his wife Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite on their wedding day. His lyre charmed Charon and silenced Cerberus. In Tartarus, Sisyphus sat on his boulder to listen. Tantalus forgot his thirst. Even Hades and Persephone listened. The rulers of the dead agreed to release Eurydice on one condition: Orpheus must not look back until they reached the surface. At the threshold, just before the light, Orpheus looked. Eurydice slipped back into shadow.

Heracles came for Cerberus as the last of his twelve labors. Hades gave permission: Heracles must use no weapons. The hero wrestled the three-headed hound bare-handed, dragged him to the surface before the terrified King Eurystheus, and returned him to his post.

Theseus and Pirithous came on a wilder errand: to kidnap Persephone as a bride for Pirithous. Hades received them with courtesy and offered chairs. The chairs held them fast. Theseus sat there until Heracles tore him free on his own descent. When Heracles reached for Pirithous, the earth shook. Pirithous would not leave.

Odysseus sailed to the edge of the Underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias. He poured blood into a trench, and the dead pressed toward the dark blood. He spoke with his mother Anticleia, who told him his father Laertes still grieved at home. He spoke with Achilles. Ajax turned away without a word.

The Rites of the Dead

Without proper burial, the soul could not cross the river. This made burial so sacred an obligation that in Sophocles's Antigone, a princess chooses death rather than leave her brother unburied.

Mourners washed the body and dressed it in white. An obol went into the mouth for Charon. The body was carried to the grave before dawn. Libations of wine and blood at the graveside fed the shades.

The Athenians celebrated the Anthesteria, a three-day festival when the dead were believed to walk among the living. Doors were smeared with pitch. At the festival's end, the dead were dismissed: "Out, you Keres! The Anthesteria is over."

At Delphi, the painter Polygnotus covered the walls of the Cnidian Lesche with a vast scene of the Underworld, its rivers and sinners painted across the stone.