Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 1 -- Greek Mythology
In his tragedy Hercules Furens, Seneca (also Chapter 3) describes Charon when the boatman
tells Hercules to halt.
A rock funereal o’erhangs the slothful shoals, where the waves are sluggish and the dull mere
is numbed.
This stream an old man tends, clad in foul garb and to the sight abhorrent, and ferries over the
quaking shades.
His beard hangs down unkempt.
A knot ties his robe’s misshapen folds.
Haggard his sunken cheeks,
Himself his own boatman, with a long pole he directs his craft.
Again and again in the chapters before us, we will meet this same boatman, always plying the
waters below.
Geographical Correspondences
The map locates
Epirus, Arcadia
and the
Peloponnesian
Peninsula where
limestone
formations of
Peloponnesus
exhibit numerous
watery grottos,
giving rise to
classical
documentation of
rivers swallowed
into un-plumbable
caverns and
breaking forth
elsewhere.
Epirus
Arcadia
Peloponnesian
Peninsula
In the table below are several purported correspondences between waters of the Greek
underworld and today's geography.
Underworld Modern Geography
Lethe Oblivion Springs
near Krya
(northwest
of Athens),
location of
the Oracle
of Trofonios
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