Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 1 -- Greek Mythology
Oceanus was represented as an old man of noble presence
and benevolent expression, with the horns of an ox or bull,
sometimes crab claws on his head, a long beard, a muscular
upper body and the lower torso of a serpent encircling the
earth. His attributes included a pitcher, cornucopia, rushes,
marine creatures and a scepter.
As a water body, Oceanus was the Atlantic Ocean, but not
the geographically-bounded sea we know today. Oceanus
was a river running around and the earth, which in turn was
believed to be a flat disk called Gaea, a derivative of a
prehistoric Egyptian/Babylonian account in which the god
Marduk piled dirt on a rush mat floating on primordial water.
The Nile was thought to be directly connected. The sun and
moon rise from and descend into this stream and only the
Great Bear remains above the waters.
From the Iliad,
Deep flowing Oceanus, from which flow all rivers and every sea and all springs and deep wells.
Never mingling with the sea which it encloses, it has neither source nor mouth.
With Jove neither does King Achelous fight nor does the mighty strength of the deep-flowing
Oceanus, from which flow all rivers and every sea and all springs and deep wells.
On Oceanus' shores dwell the minute Pygmies. On the southern banks lies Elysian where the
"blameless Aethiopians" dwell in perfect happiness.
Beyond the west lies the realm of eternal and infernal darkness where vegetation is black
poplars, fruitless willows and funerary asphodel. “The Afterworld,” says Circe to Odysseus “lies
at the extreme of the earth, beyond the vast Ocean.”
As traders continued to find inhabited and fruited land where Oceanus’ desolation would have
been expected, however, an adjustment was called for. Connection to the infernal region must
be via another Oceanic link, perhaps one closer to home, perhaps even in Arcadia where watery
caves abound. (We will see why this is so in later chapters, but we don't want to muddle Hellenist
thought with geologic digression.)
And thus came to be known the five subterranean rivers, mythical waters, we'd like to say, but
like the gods, still very much alive.
The Cocytus, the river of lamentation
The dead who can not pay Charon (whom we will meet shortly) must wander its banks forever.
The Lethe, the river of forgetfulness
The Lethe passes the extremity of the Elysian Fields. Those who drink of this stream forget the
past. The Eridanus (Po) was said to spring from the Elysian Fields, where Aeneas saw it
flowing. As later expressed by the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus in his epic
"Pharsalia,"
Here Lethe's streams, from secret springs below
Rise to the light; here heavily, and slow,
The silent, dull, forgetful waters flow
The Acheron, the river of woe
Myths tend to be inconsistent regarding geography. Homer described the Acheron as the
channel into which the Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus empty. Virgil (the Roman Encyclopedist,
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