The GREEK Underworld ? Rulers: Hades and Persephone ? Location ? Beneath secret places of earth ( Iliad )? Over edge of world, across ocean ( Odyssey )? Various entrances in caverns & deep lakes (later poetry) ? Rivers separating underworld from earth ? Acheron: woe ? Phlegethon : fire ? Cocytus : lamentation ? Lethe: forgetfulness ? Styx: the unbreakable oath ? Divisions of the Underworld ? Tartarus ? Prison of sons of earth ? Deepest region ? Wrongdoers are punished here ? Erebus: where the dead pass & are judged when they die ? Elysian Fields: place of blessedness, where the good go ? Important Figures ? Cerberus: 3-headed dog guards entrance (you e in, but you can ’ t leave) ? Judges: Minos , Aeacus , Rhadamanthus ? Erinyes (Furies) ? Greeks believed they pursued sinners on earth ? Romans placed them in underworld, punishing dead sinners ? Sleep and Death: brothers, send dreams from underworld through 2 gates ? Horn: true dreams ? Ivory: false dreams Some Suffering Sinners in the Underworld ? Tityus : tried to rape Zeus ’ mother, so bound to earth; vultures tear out his liver daily ? Ixion : tried to seduce Hera, so was bound to a spinning, flaming wheel for eternity ? Sisyphus : betrayed a secret of Zeus, so now he spends eternity pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down before he can get to the very top ? The Danaids :
