Acheron
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article concerns the Greek river. For other uses, see Acheron (disambiguation).
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The Acheron is a river located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. Acheron translates as the "river of woe" and it was believed to be a branch of the underworld river Styx over which in ancient Greek mythology Charon ferried the newly dead souls across into Hades. The lake called Acherousia and the river still called Acheron with the nearby ruins of the Necromanteion are found near Parga on the mainland opposite Corfu.
Another branch of Acheron was believed to surface at the Acherusian cape (now Eregli in Turkey) and was seen by the Argonauts according to Apollonius of Rhodes. Greeks who settled in Italy identified the Acherusian lake into which Acheron flowed with Lake Avernus. Plato in his Phaedo identified Acheron as the second greatest river in the world, excelled only by Oceanus. He claimed that Acheron flowed in the opposite direction from Oceanus beneath the earth under desert places. The god of the river, son of Oceanus and Tethys fathered Ascalaphus with Orphne or Gorgyra.
The word is also occasionally used as a synecdoche for Hades itself. Virgil mentions Acheron with the other infernal rivers in his description of the underworld in Book VI of the Aeneid. In VII, line 312 he gives to Aeneas the famous saying, flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo: 'If I cannot deflect the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.' The Acheron was sometimes referred to as a lake or swamp in Greek literature, as in Aristophanes' The Frogs and Euripides' Alcestis. In Dante's Inferno, the Acheron river forms the border of Hell. Following Greek mythology, Charon ferries souls across this river to Hell.
[edit] Modern references
- Acheron was an empire ruled by sorcerer-kings predating the time of Conan the Barbarian by three millennia in Robert E. Howard's fictional Hyborian Age. [1]
- Acheron (earlier known as LV-426) is the name of the fictitious moon where the Alien was first encountered by humans in the movie Alien (1979) of the Alien Series, and where the movie Aliens was set.
- The main river that divides the city of Dis in the novel The Lost Kings is named Acheron.
- In Jasper Fforde's the Eyre Affair, the villain is named Acheron Hades.
- Hungarian black metal band Bornholm has a song called Acheron.
- A famous fencing group in Czech Republic is called Acheron
- Acheron is the leader of the Dark Hunters in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series. [2]
- Acheron is the name of the French privateer man of war that is chased after by the H.M.S. Surprise in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
- In T. S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men", Acheron is probably the river mentioned in Part IV.
- In the book God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe, the Hellish city of Adamantinarx is built upon a river called the Acheron.
- A devastated planet known as Acheron plays a starring role in the storyline of the Xbox 360 video game Project Sylpheed.
- Acheron is the name of an immortal hero in the Dark-Hunter Series by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
- The Pit of Acheron is mentioned in Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1
- Acheron is the plane of giant cubes and other polyhedrons in the Planescape campaign of the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. See also Acheron (Dungeons & Dragons)
- In the RPG Golden Sun for the Gameboy Advance, there is a weapon known as the Darksword which unleashes an effect known as Acheron's Grief
