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The Acheron river is in the Epirus region of north west Greece. Acheron translates as "river of woe" and believed to be a branch of the underworld river Acheron 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 belived to surface at the Acherusian cape (now Eregli in Turkey) and was seen by the Argonauts according to Apollonius of Rhodes.

Greeks 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 word is also occasionally used as a metaphor for Hades itself.

The god of the river fathered Ascalaphus with Orphne or Gorgyra.

Virgil VI, 107

In Dante's InfernoThis article is about the epic poem. For information about the band of the same name, see The Divine Comedy (band). The Divine Comedy (in Italian Comedia or Commedia , later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1265, the Acheron river forms the border of hell, in the Ante-Inferno. Following with Greek mythology, Charon ferries souls across this river to HellHell is, according to many religious beliefs about the afterlife, a place of torment, of great weeping and gnashing of teeth. The English word 'hell' comes from the Norse Hel', which originally referred to the goddess of the Norse underworld. In most reli.

Greek gods



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