Underworld Geography
This river of forgetfulness flows through the underworld and erases the memories of souls.
What is Lethe?
This tragic musician tried to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld.
Who is Orpheus?
These three figures judge the souls of the dead in the Greek underworld.
Who are Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus?
Greeks placed a coin in the mouth of the deceased for this purpose.
What is to pay Charon for passage across the river?
This philosopher taught that the soul is immortal and undergoes cycles of rebirth.
Who is Plato?
In Greek myth, this is the realm ruled by Hades and Persephone.
What is the Underworld (or Hades)?
This Trojan hero is granted a detailed tour of the underworld in Virgil's Aeneid.
Who is Aeneas?
In the Roman underworld, the souls of the righteous go to this idyllic place.
What are the Elysian Fields (or Elysium)?
Roman funerals often included this type of procession with actors wearing death masks.
What is an imagines parade?
Stoics and Epicureans disagreed on this aspect of the afterlife.
What is whether the soul survives death (Epicureans said no, Stoics said possibly)?
This ferry-man transports souls across the river Styx for a fee.
Who is Charon?
This king was punished by rolling a boulder uphill for eternity.
Who is Sisyphus?
According to Plato, a soul’s fate after death depends on this.
What is the moral quality of its actions during life?
This was poured on Roman graves during rituals to nourish the dead.
What is wine (or sometimes milk or blood)?
This Roman philosopher and statesman integrated Greek beliefs into Roman moral thought.
Who is Cicero?
Roman authors sometimes equated the Greek Tartarus with this place of eternal punishment.
What is Hell (or the infernal region)?
Tantalus, in the underworld, is punished in this ironic way.
What is being surrounded by food and water he can never reach?
This early Christian idea of a final judgment day may have drawn upon Greco-Roman afterlife beliefs.
What is the Last Judgment?
Both Greek and Roman tomb inscriptions often requested this of passersby.
What is a greeting, remembrance, or libation?
ccording to Pythagorean beliefs, the soul transmigrates through this process.
What is metempsychosis (or reincarnation)?
This cave or gate is considered the entrance to the underworld in many Greek and Roman myths.
What is the Avernus (or the cave at Taenarum)?
According to Plato's Myth of Er, this figure returned from death to tell of the soul’s judgment and reincarnation.
Who is Er?
Virgil’s depiction of judgment involves this Roman deity who oversees punishments.
Who is Pluto (or Dis Pater)?
These small terracotta figurines were sometimes placed in graves to serve the dead in the afterlife.
What are funerary figurines (e.g., tanagra or larvae)?
This myth, told by Plato in Phaedo, presents death as a release of the soul from the prison of the body.
What is the Myth of the Soul (or Plato’s Phaedo dialogue)?