Journeying to the Underworld
The World of the Dead
In ancient Greek and Roman belief, death was not the end but a journey to a different realm. The dead passed into the Underworld, an underground kingdom whose geography was carefully mapped in myth and literature. Two rivers defined the boundary between life and death: the Styx was the great oath-river of the gods, whose waters were used for the most binding divine promises. The Acheron (river of woe) was the river across which the dead were ferried. Other rivers included Lethe (forgetfulness) and Phlegethon (fire).
Charon, the ferryman, waited at the riverbank to carry newly dead souls across. He required payment: a coin called an obol was placed on the tongue or over the eyes of the corpse at burial to ensure the dead could pay their fare. In Virgil’s Aeneid, the unburied dead wander for a hundred years before they may cross. A coin was sometimes placed with the dead as a symbolic fare for Charon.
The Greek Underworld was ruled by Hades and his queen Persephone. Its entrance was guarded by Cerberus, a monstrous three-headed dog. The souls of the dead were judged by three judges (Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus) and sent to different regions: Elysium for the virtuous and heroic, the Asphodel Meadows for ordinary souls, and Tartarus for the wicked, where they suffered eternal punishment.
The Abduction of Persephone: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
One of the most important mythological accounts of the Underworld is told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The hymn opens with the young goddess Persephone picking flowers in a meadow when the earth suddenly opens and Hades seizes her, dragging her down into his kingdom to be his bride. Her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest, hears her daughter’s cry and begins a frantic search across the earth. In her grief, Demeter abandons her role as harvest goddess: the crops fail, the earth becomes barren and humans begin to starve.
Zeus eventually intervenes, sending Hermes to retrieve Persephone from the Underworld. But before she leaves, Hades gives her a pomegranate seed to eat. In the rules of the Underworld, anyone who eats food in Hades’ realm is bound to return. Because she had eaten, Persephone could not remain entirely in the upper world: a compromise was reached. She would spend one third of each year with Hades below and the other two thirds with her mother and the gods above. The hymn links Demeter’s grief and recovery to the fertility of the earth. The hymn is thus a myth of origins: it explains the cycle of the seasons through a story of divine grief, loss and partial recovery.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is not merely a story about seasons: it is closely connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries, a secret religious cult held at Eleusis (near Athens) in which initiates underwent rituals connected to Demeter and Persephone. The Mysteries promised initiates a blessed afterlife — a better fate in the Underworld than ordinary souls received. The hymn ends with Demeter establishing a sacred rite at Eleusis and declaring that those who are initiated will be blessed in this life and honoured in death. The hymn is therefore both a mythological narrative about the seasons and a sacred text explaining why the Mysteries existed and what they offered. This is a classic example of myth and religion working together: the story (Persephone’s return) underpins and explains the ritual (initiation at Eleusis).
Orpheus and Eurydice: Ovid’s Metamorphoses
The Roman poet Ovid retold the story of Orpheus in his Metamorphoses (10.1–64). Orpheus was a musician of such extraordinary skill that his playing could charm animals, move stones and bend the laws of the natural world. When his wife Eurydice died on their wedding day — bitten by a snake while walking through the grass with her naiad companions — Orpheus could not accept her death. He descended into the Underworld — a feat that the living were not supposed to be able to achieve — and played his lyre before Hades and Persephone. The music was so beautiful and so full of grief that it moved the ghosts and even the Furies to tears, and the king and queen of the dead granted his plea. Even the punishments of the wicked in Tartarus paused: Sisyphus sat on his boulder, the wheel of Ixion stopped turning. Hades agreed to release Eurydice on one condition: Orpheus must lead her back to the upper world without looking back.
Orpheus led Eurydice upward through the dark passages of the Underworld. As they approached the exit and the light of the upper world was almost upon them, he could no longer resist the overwhelming urge to see whether she was truly following. He turned back to look. At that moment Eurydice slipped back into death, reaching her arms towards him as she was pulled away. Orpheus had failed by a single glance. Ovid’s version is intensely psychological: it is not cowardice or disbelief that destroys Orpheus, but love itself, which cannot accept the rules of the world it operates in.
Ovid’s account of Orpheus and Eurydice in Metamorphoses 10.1–64 is a prescribed literary source. Key details to know: in Ovid's Metamorphoses 10, Eurydice died from a snake bite while walking through the grass with her naiad companions on her wedding day; Orpheus descended to Hades and moved the underworld rulers with his music; he was given the condition of not looking back; he failed and lost Eurydice a second time. After this, Orpheus refused all further human love and was eventually killed by the Maenads (followers of Dionysos).
Heracles and Cerberus
The twelfth and final labour of Heracles required him to descend into the Underworld and bring back Cerberus, the three-headed guardian hound. This labour was the most extraordinary because it demanded something no mortal was supposed to do: enter Hades’ kingdom while still alive and leave again. Heracles achieved it through a combination of force and divine assistance. According to various ancient accounts, he first sought initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries to prepare himself (connecting the Heracles myth to the Demeter cult). He then descended, disarmed Cerberus and dragged him to the surface. The dog was shown to King Eurystheus (who, predictably, fled in terror) and then returned to the Underworld. This labour represented the ultimate conquest: not of a monster in the world above, but of death itself. It was the act that most clearly pointed towards Heracles’ eventual apotheosis — the man who could conquer Hades was not far from becoming a god.
Greek and Roman accounts of the Underworld are broadly similar — both involve rivers, a ferryman, a guardian creature, a king and queen, and regions for different kinds of dead — because the Romans largely adopted the Greek mythological tradition. But there are differences in emphasis. In Ovid’s telling of Orpheus and Eurydice, the Underworld is shown as strangely responsive to emotion: Hades and Persephone weep, the punishments pause. This is a characteristically Roman, humanised portrayal. Virgil’s Aeneid Book 6 (not a prescribed text but useful contextual knowledge) gives the most systematic Latin account of the Underworld: Aeneas descends to speak with his dead father and is shown the whole realm, including the souls of Romans yet to be born. This gives the Underworld a specifically Roman purpose — it is the repository of Rome’s future greatness. The Greek Underworld, as portrayed in the Hymn to Demeter, is a darker, more terrifying place of permanent loss.