Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 28 -- Et In Arcadia Ego
CHAPTER 28
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
The Greek portion of our journey has to this point largely been one of chronicling the
entrenchment of Homer's underground rivers of the afterlife -- the Cocytus, Lethe, Acheron, Styx
and Pyriphlegethon -- into modern thought. We'll see more of the subject in chapters to come.
But Caron's waters are not the only subterranean Greek streams formative to Western culture.
In chapters ahead we shall explore the themes of
underground rivers in metaphor, poetry and art, but let us
first visit the Arcadian River Alpheus on the rugged
Peloponnese Peninsula, home to Pan, god of nature and
patron of shepherds.
Aristotle's Meteorologica considered the subject, but true to the author's bent for logic over lore, in
a more mechanical sense.
In many places: in the Peloponnese, for example, one finds it [i.e. underground rivers] most
often in Arcadia.
The rivers that are swallowed up by the earth prove that there are chasms and cavities in the
earth ... in the Peloponnese, for example ... The reason is that because the country is
mountainous there are no outlets from the valleys to the sea; so when these valleys get filled
with water and there is no outlet, the water flowing in from above forces its way out and finds a
way through into the depths of the earth.
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