Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Acheron Tar with iron plates floating
upon it
Chapter 1 -- Greek Mythology
Thesprotia,
southern
Epirus
Styx Circling Tartarus nine times Mavroneri
("black water")
in Arcadia,
famous for its
300-m waterfall,
the highest in
Greece. Visiting
in 1895, Sir
James Frazer
remarked of
black waters
running down
cliffs of dark
rock like walls of
"ebon hue."
Pyriphlegethon River of fire One of many Mediterranean lava flows
(Chapter 41)
Recalling the CLASP mnemonic, we note that of the several subterranean rivers of Greek myth,
only the Cocytus hasn't -- at least nominally -- made its way to the surface.
The lower Acheron valley illustrates the metamorphosis of the Peloponnesian landscape. In
ancient times the river formed Lake Acherusia, a locale legendarily associated with Charon. The
rivers Cocytus and Vouvos (then called Pyriphlegethon) also emptied into the lake, and then all
together emptied into the vast Glukys Himen ("Sweet Harbor") noted by Strabo (Chapter 3) and
mentioned by Thucydides during the stop of the fleet of the Corinthians the day before the naval
battle of Syvota (433 BC).
The following four-millennia chronology of the valley is adapted from "The Lower Acheron River
Valley, Ancient Accounts and the Changing Landscape," Hesperia Supplements 32, 2003, by
Mark Besonen, George Rapp and Zhichun Jing.
The Ionian Sea is to the left. Today's River Acheron is the channel sweeping from the upper
right. Drainage works have reduced Strabo's great Sweet Harbor to the snug moorage of Argo
Janni at the Acheron mouth.
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