What is Acheron in the Odyssey?
In the Odyssey, Acheron is where two rivers meet to form one and where the goddess Circe sends Odysseus to make sacrifices and prayers so that he and his men might safely communicate with the ghosts of the underworld.
What is Acheron in Greek mythology?
In Greek mythology, the Acheron is one of five rivers of the underworld. It is known as the “River of Woe.” The souls of those who died were taken across it by the old boatman Charon in his skiff.
Where is Acheron located?
Acheron is the name of a real river in Greece that flows through the Tomaros mountains in northern Greece down into the Ionian Sea. In Greek mythology, it lies between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
When was Acheron created?
The river Acheron first appears in Homer’s Odyssey, which was written between the 7th and 8th century BCE, although it likely existed in oral traditions for hundreds of years before it was transcribed into text.
Why is Acheron called Acheron?
The name Acheron may come from the ancient Greek word for marsh or place of lake formation. Over time, it came to mean “river of woe” in Greek mythology because it forms the border between the land of the living andthe land of the dead.
How did souls cross the Acheron in Greek mythology?
Souls were ferried across the Acheron by Charon in his boat. He required payment, and those who did not have it were destined to walk the riverbed for a hundred years before they could cross.
Table of Contents
Origins and Mythological Role
The Acheron was probably considered the border between the land of the living and the land of the dead in oral Greek mythology for hundreds of years before it appeared in Homer’s Odyssey in the seventh or eighth century BCE. This is the earliest mention of Acheron on record.
The Odyssey follows Odysseus and his men as they attempt to return home after the Trojan War. They came upon many significant challenges on their voyage, although some challenges were less demanding than others.
One of their obstacles was presented by the goddess Circe, who kept the crew in her company for a full year “feasting upon an untold quantity both of meat and wine.” Eventually, Odysseus and the men grew a little restless and probably more than a little bloated.
When Odysseus asked Circe if they could leave and return home, she put another task before him: Odysseus and his men must enter the underworld to hear the prophecy of a dead seer’s ghost.
To do that, the crew needed to sail to Acheron. Homer describes Acheron as the place where two rivers meet, one of which is a branch of the river Styx.
It is here that they could contact the underworld, but only after performing ritual sacrifices and prayers to the god Hades. Upon reaching Acheron and performing the sacrifices, Odysseus encountered many ghosts, including one of his own crew who had died from drunkenly falling off a roof.
Finally, the ghost of the seer appears, only to tell Odysseus that the gods and goddesses have placed many more challenges ahead of them.[1]
The Evolution of Acheron in Literature and Philosophy
From Acheron’s role in Homer’s Odyssey, the myth continued to evolve through the pens of some of the most famous authors of the ancient and medieval world. Plato, Virgil, and Dante all mention Acheron, adding their own takes to the legend.
Acheron in the Works of Plato
Around 300 years after Acheron appears in the Odyssey, it popped up in the writings of Plato, one of history’s most famous philosophers.
Plato’s incredibly influential work, Phaedo, which is known for establishing the soul as immortal, makes many significant descriptions of Acheron. He describes Acheron as one of the four great rivers of the world, second behind Oceanus, a river that circles the world.
According to Plato, Acheron flowed in the opposite direction and passed under the earth through the deserts and into Acherusian lake. It is on the shores of this lake that “the souls of the many” would wait to be reincarnated into animals. The better the life they live, the less they wait.
For other souls, those that were neither good nor bad, they must take “any vessel they may find” through Acheron until they reach the lake. At the lake, they are judged and rewarded for any good deeds and punished for any bad, before being assigned to an afterlife.
Acheron in Virgil’s Aeneid
Another 400 years or so later, Acheron appears in Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. Virgil describes Acheron as less of a river and more of a swamp surrounding hell, or an “innavigable flood.” He says the portal to the underworld is where “swollen Acheron o’erflows its bound.”
Virgil tells the story of Aeneis, who, like Odysseus, also had trouble getting from Troy to his destination. Aeneis ended up in Italy, where he became the first ancestor to the Roman people, but not before a long journey that included a trip to the underworld and back.
Aeneis is also sent to the underworld to hear a prophecy, but he doesn’t need to wait by the banks to encounter ghosts like Odysseus did. Aeneis actually has to ford the Acheron itself and cross into the underworld. The only way to undertake such a harrowing task is with the help of the ferryman Charon, who is in charge of taking souls across the Acheron and into the land of the dead.
With the help of the goddess Sibyl, Aeneis is able to convince Charon to shoo away the souls waiting for passage and lead them into the underworld instead. They pass the Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the land of the dead, and make it to the underworld. There, Aeneis meets many prophets and speaks with the spirit of his father, who foretells the future glories of Rome.
Acheron in Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Inferno, the first part of Dante’s epic The Divine Comedy, was written in 1321, more than a thousand years after Plato. Dante’s work is very much about the Christian version of hell, but Acheron’s connection to the underworld remains.
Dante’s guide through hell is a fictionalized characterization of the poet Virgil, an allegorical figure representing human wisdom. Inspired by the real-life Virgil, whom Dante admired, he described Acheron in a manner similar to Virgil’s.
In Inferno, however, Charon only shepherds those across the river who are destined for hell, warning his passengers: “Hope nevermore of heaven to win the sight. I come to take you to the other strand of frost and fire and everlasting night.”
Those who in life did not commit to either good or evil seem to share an even worse fate, as they are left on the shores of Acheron in eternal agony. Naked, they are swarmed by wasps and hornets, with worms and maggots constantly at their feet.
Charon doesn’t allow them to board, nor does he want to bring Dante along since Dante is still among the living. He finally relents when Virgil convinces him it is Dante’s divine calling to see the depths of hell.
Acheron, the Styx, and Other Rivers of the Underworld
Although Acheron is one of the earliest rivers associated with the underworld, it was not the only one. Although the myths and rivers changed over time, the concept of a river or rivers separating the land of the living from the land of the dead remained a constant in Greek mythology.
Acheron vs. Styx: Differences and Similarities
By far the most remembered mythological river associated with the division between life and death is the river Styx. Perhaps the hard rock band Styx, which somehow sold twenty million albums in the ‘70s and ’80s, has something to do with that. Whatever the reason, Acheron fell in stature as Greek and Roman mythology evolved and is not nearly as well known as the Styx.
Virgil, who mentions both rivers, writes that Acheron was the source of the river Styx, and that is probably closest to the truth in terms of how the myths have evolved as well.
Many of the attributes once associated with Acheron became part of the legend of the river Styx instead. Even the old boatman Charon was placed on the river Styx instead of Acheron by later Roman poets, such as Ovid.
The Styx has its own myths as well as those taken from Acheron. In Roman legend, Styx was also a river goddess, a daughter of Oceanus. She was, according to some myths, abducted by Hades, which is how she came to lie between Hades and the land of the living.
The river Styx was also known as a place by which to make oaths, as decreed by Zeus himself. Swearing by the river Styx was the equivalent of swearing on your mother’s life. If Zeus doubted the word of another god, all he had to do was put the god in front of some water from the river Styx to make sure he got the truth.
In contrast, Acheron’s waters were always less sanctified and far more dreaded. Perhaps had it not been replaced by the Styx in later mythology, it would have evolved to be just as revered.
Other Rivers of the Underworld
In all, there were five rivers associated with death and passage to the afterlife in Greek mythology. They are Acheron, the “river of woe,” Cocytus, “the river of weeping,” Phlegethon, “the river of fire,” the Lethe, “the river of forgetfulness,” and the Styx, the “river of oaths,” which ultimately became the most widely associated with taking the souls of the dead.
All these rivers come and go throughout Greek myth, often taking on traits of the others as the myths evolved. In some, Styx is the source of the other rivers, and in others, they spring from Acheron. What they have in common is their connection to the passage from life to death and their part in the ancient myths that helped the ancient Greeks understand this universal passage.
Acheron in Ancient Beliefs and Rituals
Most of what is known about the Acheron comes from what we can read in the various myths, but there are also physical clues that ancient Greeks followed these myths and used them in their death rites and rituals.[2]
There is a real-world river in Northern Greece named Acheron, and while it is impossible to say if the river was named after the myth or if the myth was named after the river, there is archeological evidence that ancient Greeks used this river to communicate with the dead.
Ancient Greek texts talk about the Necromanteion, a temple devoted to talking to the dead, and in 1958, archaeologists believed they discovered its ruins along the banks of the Acheron.
Some question whether this is the true Necromanteion, but there is significant evidence that it is a place where ancient Greeks would perform month-long cleansing rituals and eat particular foods in order to purify themselves. Once they had done so, they could talk to the spirits of their deceased loved ones, just as Odysseus had done.
Acheron’s Connection to Charon
When Acheron is depicted in art from the ancient era, it is almost always with the not-so-picturesque but quite memorable Charon ferrying souls from one side to the other.
Cheron was described by Virgil as having a “gruesome guise,” but his image softened somewhat over the years. In ancient Greek art, he has been depicted as anything from a skeletal-like being to a long-bearded, well-appointed god barely covered by a loincloth.
Charon’s services were in high demand. He had to make sure the souls who requested his services had been buried properly and that all the death rites had been administered. He took his job quite seriously, and he was often depicted as fighting off the souls of those who were not properly prepared.
He also required a reward for his labors. Those wishing to cross had to give him a coin. If they did not do so, they were destined to remain as ghosts on the other side for many years in purgatory.
In ancient Greece, this legend led to the custom of placing a coin in the mouth of the dead before burial. This coin, which became known as “Charon’s obol,” was the payment that would get the deceased safely into the underworld. The custom became quite widespread, even making it to death rites in ancient China, where Western coins were also placed in the mouths of the dead.
Acheron in Modern Culture
The river Acheron has maintained a rather obscure but still apparent presence in modern culture from when it was briefly mentioned in Macbeth to becoming the name of a main character in the popular video game Honkai: Star Rail.
It has also appeared as the title of an episode in the eleventh season of The Walking Dead, in which the characters descend into a hellish subway tunnel for much of the episode, but in general, the name’s use seems divorced from its original meaning.
For instance, there’s a number of companies named Acheron, including an executive hiring company based in Spain. If the founders truly meant to name their firm after the “river of woe,” that doesn’t say a lot for their job placement process.
The name also appeared as that of a ghost in DC Comics and the name of the main character in the extremely popular Dark Hunter fantasy series, but neither seem obviously connected to the river between heaven and hell.
There have also been more than a few bands (mostly metal and death metal) named Acheron, but, fittingly, none of them reached the popularity of Styx.
A Timeless Symbol of the Afterlife
While the name may have slipped into obscurity, where Acheron does endure is in the symbolic line that souls must cross as they move from the land of the living to the land of the dead.
Acheron is one of the first examples we have in which a river serves as a metaphor for this journey. It’s a river of woe because we are separated from those who have crossed to the other side, but the myths also allow us some connection to the dead. We can still talk to those that have crossed before us, as the Greeks attempted to do. Whether they are listening or not comes down to your personal belief system.
As Christianity and Greek mythology collided in the works of Dante and beyond, Hades became the Christian notion of hell, and the river became the separation between earth and the fiery underworld, with purgatory on its banks. The idea of the darkly flowing Acheron took on new meaning as an earthly reminder that we’d rather meet the haloed St. Peter than old Charon of the gruesome guise.
References
- Heubeck, Alfred, Stephanie West, John Bryan Hainsworth, and A. Hoekstra. 1990. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Clarendon Press.
- Garland, Robert. 1985. The Greek Way of Life. Cornell University Press.
- Lyu, Pin. 2024. “Placing Western Coins Near the Deceased in Ancient China: The Origin of a Custom.” Sino-Platonic Papers 351. https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp351_coins_burial_ancient_china.pdf.