Mythological Journey Through Tartarean Acheron

Here starts the pathway to the waters of Tartarean Acheron.' A whirlpool thick with sludge, its giant eddy seething, vomits all of its swirling sand into Cocytus.2 Grim Charon is the squalid ferryman, the guardian of these streams, these rivers; his white hairs lie thick, disheveled on his chin; h...

Here starts the pathway to the waters of Tartarean Acheron.' A whirlpool thick with sludge, its giant eddy seething, vomits all of its swirling sand into Cocytus.2 Grim Charon is the squalid ferryman, the guardian of these streams, these rivers; his white hairs lie thick, disheveled on his chin; his eyes are fires that stare, a filthy mantle3 hangs down his shoulder by a knot. Alone he poles the boat and tends the sails and carries the dead in his dark ship, old as he is; but old age in a god is tough and green. And here a multitude was rushing, swarming shoreward, with men and mothers, bodies of high-hearted heroes stripped of life, and boys and unwed girls, and young men set upon the pyre of death before their fathers' eyes: thick as the leaves that with the early frost of autumn drop and fall within the forest, or as the birds that flock along the beaches, in flight from frenzied seas when the chill season drives them across the waves to lands of sun. They stand; each pleads to be the first to cross the stream; their hands reach out in longing for the farther shore. But Charon, sullen boatman, now takes these souls, now those; the rest he leaves; thrusting them back, he keeps them from the beach. That disarray dismays and moves Aeneas: "O virgin, what does all this swarming mean? What do these spirits plead? And by what rule must some keep off the bank while others sweep the blue-black waters with their oars?" The words the aged priestess speaks are brief: "Anchises' son, certain offspring of the gods, you see the deep pools of Cocytus and the marsh of Styx, by whose divinity even the High Ones are afraid to swear falsely. All these you see are helpless and unburied. That ferryman is Charon. And the waves will only carry souls that have a tomb. Before his bones have found their rest, no one may cross the horrid shores and the hoarse waters. They wander for a hundred years and hover about these banks until they gain their entry, to visit once again the pools they long for." WW