Chapter 3: Olympos, the Underworld, and Minor Divinities
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♠ Homer, Odyssey 24
Meanwhile Cyllenian Hermes called forth the spirits of the wooers. He held in his hands his wand, a fair wand of gold, wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he will, while others again he wakens even out of slumber; with this he roused and led the spirits, and they followed gibbering. And as in the innermost recess of a wondrous cave bats flit about gibbering, when one has fallen from off the rock from the chain in which they cling to one another, so these went with him gibbering, and Hermes, the Helper, led them down the dank ways. Past the streams of Oceanus they went, past the rock Leucas, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, and quickly came to the mead of asphodel, where the spirits dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils. Continue Reading Greek Text
♠ Homer, Odyssey 11.157-58
Hard is it for those that live to behold these realms, for between are great rivers and dread streams; Oceanus first Greek Text
♠ Homer, Iliad 8.369
then had he not escaped the sheer-falling waters of Styx Greek Text
♠ Homer, Iliad 23.71-74
Bury me with all speed, that I pass within the gates of Hades. Afar do the spirits keep me aloof, the phantoms of men that have done with toils, neither suffer they me to join myself to them beyond the River, but vainly I wander through the wide-gated house of Hades. Greek Text
♠ Alkaios 38A LP – Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, p. 128, ed. E. Lobel and D. L. Page. Oxford 1955
♠ Sappho 95 LP – Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, p. 77, ed. E. Lobel and D. L. Page. Oxford 1955
♠ Aischylos, Hepta epi Thebas (Seven against Thebes) 854-60
But sail upon the wind of lamentation, my friends, and about your head row with your hands’ rapid stroke in conveyance of the dead, that stroke which always causes the sacred slack-sailed, black-clothed ship to pass over Acheron to the unseen land where Apollo does not walk, the sunless land that receives all men. Greek Text
♠ Aischylos, Hepta epi Thebas (Seven against Thebes) 690
let the whole race of Laius, hated by Phoebus, be swept on the wind to Cocytus’ destined flood! Greek Text
♠ Aischylos, Agamemnon 1160
but now by Cocytus and the banks of Acheron Greek Text
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, February 2021
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