Before we start this video, I just want to briefly mention that only 10% of you are subscribed,
so if you enjoy the content please consider subscribing to support future content.
Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we’re going to discuss
the five rivers of the underworld: Styx, Acheron, Lethe, Phlegethon, and Cocytus.
Let’s get into it.
We’re going to start off this video by taking a look at the Titans Oceanus and Tethys,
as the vast majority of water deities are their progeny, so beginning with them will
allow us to cover the parentage of the five rivers of the underworld in one fell swoop.
The children of Uranus, the personification of the sky, and of Gaia, the personification of the
earth, both Oceanus and Tethys numbered among the 12 first-generation titans.
Oceanus was the personification of the great river that encircled the world, and Tethys - her sphere
of influence more ambiguous - was either the font of Oceanus’ sweet waters or a sea goddess,
one that personified its fecundity. Together, Oceanus and Tethys produced the Oceanids, a group
of 3,000 water nymphs, the greatest of whom were Doris, Amphitrite, and Metis, and more germane to
this video, they also produced all the rivers of the world, including the rivers of the underworld.
With that covered, we can start looking at each river in detail
without having to delineate the same parental information five times.
Starting us off is the river Styx.
Compared to the other four rivers of the underworld, Styx is really in a league of her own,
both in being the only female river deity and in the degree of prominence she has in
Greek mythology; the others are quite obscure by comparison. Called Stygos Hydor (“Water
of Horror”) by Homer, Styx was the foremost river of the underworld. According to Hesiod,
she was the oldest of the Oceanids, the female children born to the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.
In the version presented by Hyginus, Styx was described as the daughter of Nyx,
the personification of night, and of Erebus, the personification of darkness.
Styx was said to flow around the underworld, encircling it nine times. In some versions,
it is Styx’ waters over which the ferryman Charon
ferries the dead across; though other versions have the river Acheron as the one Charon crosses.
From her union with the Titan Pallas, Styx bore four children:
Zelos, “Zeal”, Nike, “Victory”, Cratos, “Power”, and Bia, “Force”. In the war against the Titans,
Styx, her four children in tow, sided with Zeus, who extended his countenance and guaranteed
a place of honour to any that forsook the Titans and allied themselves with the gods.
Styx was the first to change her allegiance, and her boldness reaped great rewards. Her children,
it was decreed, were to always be in Zeus’ train, staying close to the king
of the gods at all times, and Styx was made the keeper of divine oaths; so her waters,
henceforth, were present each and every time a god proclaimed an oath. Each time one was to be sworn,
Zeus would dispatch Iris the messenger of the gods and the goddess of the rainbow, to the underworld
to fetch a ewer of water from the waters Styx and bring it back to Olympus. In this way,
Styx always bore witness to any oath that was sworn by the gods. The consequences that awaited
gods who perjured themselves before Styx’ sacred waters were not to be taken lightly. Those who
transgressed in this way suffered for 10 years. For the first, they were unable to
breath or partake in nectar or ambrosia. For the subsequent nine, they were treated as pariahs,
prohibited from participating in deliberations or feasts, ostracised from society.
One of the best known myths that features Styx is one of the versions of Metis trying to imbue
Achilles with immortality. She held him by his ankles and dipped him head first into
the river Styx. Consequently immortality was never bestowed on Achilles, but he was made invulnerable
everywhere except for his ankles, which were never dipped in Styx’ waters like the rest of him.
Up next we have the Acheron.
The river Acheron, whose name was sometimes used to refer to the entire underworld,
similar to how the name Hades was used in this way, was the second most important river
in the domain of the dead. The geography of the underworld changed as the centuries passed,
but according to the oldest source - which is Homer - that discussed the Acheron, it flowed
beyond the river Oceanus and was situated near the Grove of Persephone. Here, where two of the
other rivers of the underworld (Phlegethon, the river of fire, and Cocytus, the river of
wailing) was where Odysseus conjured and communed with the spirits of the dead in the Odyssey.
Later, contrasting with Homer’s account was that of Virgil, who described the Acheron
as the river over which Charon ferried the dead, identifying it with the river Styx.
The Aeneid describes a throng of dead, forlorn on the bank of the Acheron, clambering over each
other to secure passage aboard Charon’s boat. Those not buried properly were denied entry into
the underworld for 100 years, forced to linger in limbo on the Acheron’s dismal, desolate shore.
An Obul was required from every soul to pay for passage, which is what fueled the tradition of
placing a coin in the mouths of the dead during burial ceremonies. As for Charon himself,
there were many disparate descriptions of his appearance, ranging from an old, squalid,
miserable man, to a mallet-wielding demon with wings and with snakes writhing in his hair.
One story has Charon deny Hercules passage, an inconvenience for which Hercules
beats the Ferryman into submission with his own boathook. Charon was then bound in chains for
a year for his failure, allowing a living person to pass through to death’s domain.
Next up is the river Lethe.
The River Lethe was the river of oblivion. Its waters were drunk by the shades of the dead so
that they forgot the lives they led when their hearts still beat and their lungs still drew
breath, allowing them to dwell in the underworld unencumbered by their previous lives. Confusingly,
there was also Lethe, the personification of oblivion, who was the daughter of Eris,
the personification of strife, whom you probably remember as the scorned woman
who lobbed a golden apple into a wedding and started the Trojan war.
In one tradition, it was believed that the dead drank from the river Lethe before being
reincarnated so that they would forget their time beneath the earth. The opposite of Lethe was the
titan-goddess Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, from whom, after a union with Zeus,
a passionate affair that lasted nine days and nine nights, came the nine muses.
Up next is the river Phlegethon.
The River Phlegethon, “Blazing River”, also known as Pyriphlegethon, “Fire-Blazing River”, was one
of the tributaries that fed the River Acheron. Later, as described by the poet Virgil, the river
took on a new form. It became a sort of flaming moat that surrounded Tartarus, described here as
a fortified region, sequestered from the rest of the underworld by three rows of walls encasing it.
Finally, we have the river Cocytus.
The river Cocytus was known as the river of wailing, its name derived from Kokyein, “to wail”,
in ancient Greek. By Homer’s account, the Cocytus was a branch of the river Styx and, with the river
Phlegethon, flowed into the river Acheron. One of the darkest and most developed descriptions that
involves the river Cocytus is given by the poet Virgil as he recounts Aeneas’ descent into the
cavernous dark beneath the earth, transcending the boundary that separates life from death.
Per his description, the tributaries that fed the Acheron met in a great confluence,
forming a foul and fetid whirlpool that bubbles reek and belches sludge.
And that’s it for this video! If you enjoy the content please
LIKE the video and SUBSCRIBE to the channel