n. Greek Mythology The river of woe, one of the five rivers of Hades. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. His heel remained his only vulnerable spot, as this was where his mother gripped him while the rest of his body was under the river’s waters. Plato described the Acheron as the second greatest river in the world and detailed its flow beneath the ground, particularly through the desert, to form the border of the Underworld. The newly dead would be ferried across the Acheron by Charon in order to enter th… Acheron was the bridge between the ultimate order of Nirvana and the regimented evil of the Nine Hellsand as such, each layer emphasized order over evil. As a goddess in the form of a body of water, this river was very powerful and had legendary magical powers. He visited the junction of the Styx and the Acheron, in order to summon spirits of the dead to guide him. Charon ferried the shades of the Damned across the Acheron. When he poured sacrificial blood into the rivers, the shade of Teiresias (a blind prophet) appeared and gave him the directions that he needed. Even the gods had an unexpected level of respect for the River Styx and, when trying to be as sincere as possible, swore by it. In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron was known as the "river of woe", and was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. Infernopedia is a FANDOM Games Community. The Acheron was a very large and wide river that circled around the vestibule of Hell. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Last week I released an article about the first three rivers of the Underworld – you can read it by CLICKING HERE. Acheron, although strictly a branch of the river Styx, was also frequently used as a synonym for Hades itself. If given the slightest chance, they will consume other insects, and styx hatchlings will attempt to eat acheron hatchlings whenever they can and vice versa. In Greek mythology, the River Styx (Meaning "Hateful") was one of the five rivers of the Underworld. The land masses on each layer were blocks of geometric simplicity the size of nations floating in a sea of air. In this article I present the final two to you – Styx and Acheron. Achilles himself was held in the river as a youth, which was the reason he became physically impossible to defeat. After a soul made its journey to the entrance it was always welcomed, but then doomed to remain there forever. Acherontic - dark and dismal as of the rivers Acheron and Styx in Hades; "in the depths of an Acheronian forest"; "upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue"-Wordsworth All three eventually descended through all of Hell and pooled into the Ninth Circle where they froze and formed Lake Cocytus. In Greek mythology, Styx is a titan deity and a river that forms the boundary between Earth and the Underworld (the domain often called Hades, which also is the name of its ruler). See more. Both species consume vast amounts of vegetation as hatchlings, but are also omnivorous. Thus it was customary for a coin to be placed in the mouth of a dead perosn before burial. Acheron (Woe or Misery) In Greek mythology, the Acheron is one of the five Underworld rivers that fed from a swampy lake called Acherousia or Acherousian lake.The Acheron is the River of Woe or the River of Misery; and in some tales it is the principal river of the Underworld, displacing the Styx, so in those tales the ferryman Charon takes the dead across the Acheron … Modern stories have him transporting them across the Styx to their final destination. Acheron and styx hatchlings have only minor differences in appearance. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. In the end this seemingly small vulnerability was the reason that he was killed. On it's shores are those who lived with neither infamy or praise and they are denied entry into the Inferno or Paradise. Video games After the Trojan War, Odysseus lost his way while trying to return home. ( Log Out /  ( Log Out /  He was human, for now, and he wasn’t supposed to be here. The others are the Styx and the Phlegethon.