Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, the river Phlegethon () or Pyriphlegethon (, ) was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron.

Mythology

According to

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

's ''

Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; ) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'' is divi ...

'', the Phlegethon feeds into the river Acheron, alongside the Cocytus.

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

describes it as "a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus". In

Orphic literature Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greece, ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underwo ...

, in which there are four rivers of the underworld, the Phlegethon is associated with the element of fire, and the direction east.''Brill's New Pauly''
s.v. Phlegethon (2)
Orphic fr. 123 II (I p. 283), IV (I p. 283) Bernabé. In '' Oedipus'' by

Seneca the Younger Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger ( ; AD 65), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoicism, Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, a dramatist, and in one work, a satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature. Seneca ...

, the first singing of the chorus, which mainly describes the plague that has settled in Thebes, includes the line, "Phlegethon has changed his course and mingled Styx with Theban streams." While this is not essential to the plot of the play, the line figuratively serves to suggest Death has become physically present in Thebes.

''The Divine Comedy''

In Dante's '' Inferno'', which is the first part of ''

The Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' (, ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun and completed around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest wor ...

'', Phlegethon is described as a river of blood that boils souls. It is in the Seventh Circle of Hell, which punishes those who committed crimes of violence against their fellow men (see Canto XII, 46–48); murderers, tyrants, and the like. By causing hot blood to flow through their violent deeds in life, they are now sunk in the flowing, boiling blood of the Phlegethon. The depth at which each sinner must stand in the river is determined by the level of violence they caused in life; Dante sees Attila the Hun and

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...

up to their eyebrows.

Centaur A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version o ...

s patrol the circle, firing arrows at those who try to rise above their allotted level in the river. Dante and

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

cross Phlegethon with help from Nessus.

Notes

References

* Bernabé, Alberto (1996), ''Poetae epici Graeci: Testimonia et fragmenta, Pars I'', Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Stuttgart and Leipzig, Teubner, 1996.
Online version at De Gruyter
* '' Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. Antiquity, Volume 11'', Phi-Prok, editors: Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Brill, 2007.
Online version at Brill
*

, ''The Odyssey with an English Translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes'', Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

; London, William Heinemann, Ltd., 1919
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
{{Authority control Greek underworld Rivers of the Greek underworld Divine Comedy