UNDERWORLD OF THE DEAD. — The underworld of the dead, designated by the term "Inferi," does not convey the idea of a dark place of punishment, as might appear from the Christian accusation against them, but rather, more generally, as an underground realm where souls gather after death, whether deserving of reward or punishment. The Inferi are not depicted solely as a kingdom of darkness and sorrow, but also as a luminous realm of the blessed: a characteristic common to nearly all ancient religions.
1. Among the Mesopotamians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, the underworld of the dead, a dark place where the water of life still flows, is called *arallû*. One enters it through seven gates and it is ruled by the divine couple Ereshkigal and Allatu. A description of it is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh (v.).
2. The Egyptians embellished their vision of the afterlife. From the primitive belief that made the tomb the dwelling of the deceased, to which it was necessary to provide what was needed for their shadowy existence, they progressed to conceiving the underworld (*amantu*) as a place where the soul, once it had boarded the sun’s boat, crossed the twelve divisions of the journey and underwent the judgment of Osiris with his 42 judges, before passing into the Fields of Yaru (Earu), where a happy eternal dwelling awaited II.
3. Indo-Iranians
In the Vedic period of Indian religion, heaven is exclusively the world of the pious, heroes, etc., from which the wicked are excluded (Rgveda, X, 17, 4). Alongside this belief, there must have existed—even if explicit accounts are lacking—that of an afterlife destined for the wicked. Indeed, while a Vedic ritual (Tait. Arany., VI, 5, 13) states: “Near King Yama (the king of the dead)… the men who were faithful to the truth here below are separated from those who lied,” the following passages may provide some evidence for the belief in an underground realm for the souls of the wicked: “May Indra and Soma hurl the wrongdoers into the covered and closed cave (*vāra*), into darkness…”; “May he dwell beneath the three earths… he who plots perfidy against us” (Rgveda, VII, 104, 3 and 11); and it is also said of those “who lead a dissolute life like women who deceive their husbands, who are wicked and false and faithless, they have created for themselves this deep place” (ibid., IV, 4, 5). Furthermore, in the Atharva Veda (II, 14, 3), while wishing for the wicked sorceress “that she may plunge into the depths of the infinite prison,” there is a passage (V, 19, 3) that lingers on describing the sinner—who on earth offended a brahmin—as seated among streams of blood and eating his own hair; this could demonstrate the belief, in India, of a well-defined underworld, perhaps closely connected with that common to other Indo-European peoples (v. below).Moreover, the Avesta (which preserves many beliefs from the Indo-Iranian period) contains a detailed description of the fate awaiting good and evil souls: “The wicked, the evil rulers… their souls will receive unclean food, and they will certainly go to dwell in the house of the Druj” (Yasna, 49, 11), and: “He who deceives the just will later know groans, long dwelling in darkness, tainted food, and words of insult. Behold the world, O wicked ones, where your deeds and your religion lead you” (ibid., 31, 20).
In addition, the Avesta preserves a detail that will be widely developed especially in Greek religion: that of the crossroads where the soul must arrive upon reaching the afterlife: “Through the Chinvat Bridge the souls can go to heaven, or, if damned, to the Druj” (ibid., 46, 11).
4. Greece
For the Greeks, the afterlife, that is, the world of the Inferi, which they call Hades (Ἅιδης = the invisible), is a real world; indeed, a kind of geography of it existed, with descriptions of paths, regions, rivers, etc., which, according to tradition, had first been fixed by Orpheus during his katabasis (Olympiodorus, *In Platonis Phaedonem comment.*, ed. W. Norvin, pp. 202-12) and which was certainly made known to the initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries as a boast about the afterlife (O thrice-blessed are those mortals who, after having beheld these mysteries, go down to Hades: for they alone can live there; for the others everything will be torment: Sophocles, frg. 348, ed. Didot).Hades, in turn, appears distinct from Tartarus, the prison of the deposed gods (Il., VIII, 13 sgg.), and from Erebus, the true prison of the dead (cf. loc. cit., 368).
This realm of shadows was not, however, entirely inaccessible to the living; in addition to the aforementioned katabasis of Orpheus, one may consider the Nekyia of Ulysses in the *Odyssey* (Od., XI), which served as a model for later ones. Access to it could be gained through certain caves or caverns, such as that at Cape Taenarum in Laconia, at Hermione in Argolis, or at Cumae in Italy.
This kingdom of shadows consists of an immense underground cavern located in the West, at the borders of the Ocean (Homer, Il., XX, 61; Od., X, 506 sgg.); and it is ruled by the pitiless Hades (or Pluto), later joined by his wife Persephone (Il., IX, 457, 568).
It is separated from the world of the living by one or more great gates (also called the “gates of the Sun”: Od., XXIV, 12), just beyond which lies the “meadow of asphodel” (Od., loc. cit. and XI, 539). This meadow—which serves as the vestibule of Hades, and where Ulysses, having descended to the Underworld, encounters Achilles (Od., loc. cit.)—in later times, when the Greek mind had developed a clearer conception of the afterlife as a place of reward or punishment for souls (v. below), was considered the abode of those who in life had been neither good nor bad (cf. Lucian, *De luctu*, 9).
According to tradition, Orpheus had spoken of only one infernal river: the Styx, which appears in the oldest strata of Homeric epic; indeed, in the *Iliad* (VIII, 369), the underworld is invoked by swearing on the River Styx. But later, the rivers that traverse or encircle Hades became numerous, and in the *Odyssey* itself (VIII) we find the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus.
The ferryman of these rivers is the old Charon, grave and calm in appearance—whose first mention dates to the 6th century (cf. Pausanias, X, 28, 1)—to whom the soul had to pay an obol for passage.
Guarding the gates of the Underworld stands Cerberus, the dog, variously depicted with a hundred, fifty, or three heads, certainly known from ancient times (the hound of Hades is alluded to in Il., VIII, 367; Od., XI, 623; first named in Hesiod, *Theog.*, 311).
The *psychē*, or vital breath, leaves the man at death but does not perish with death; it retains the likeness of the deceased and wanders without consciousness in the eternal night of Hades. It could, however, regain consciousness when offered the blood of a sacrifice performed by the living, poured into a pit in communication with the underworld.
However, in a later period, the religion of Greece could not have been foreign to the belief in the Underworld as a reward or punishment for the souls of the deceased. This is evident not only because in Homer himself (Il., III, 279; XIX, 260), in solemn oaths, alongside the supreme gods, the Furies are invoked, who beneath the earth punish perjurers; but also because in Homer (Od., XI) mention is made of the three Titans: Tityus, Sisyphus, and Tantalus, condemned in the Underworld to ever-renewed punishments. Above all, however, because already in Hesiod (Works, 287, 3) and with greater detail in Pindar (frg. 129, 130B, in Plutarch, Consol. ad Apoll. 35; cf. Pindar, Olymp., 2, 56), the tradition of the two paths—of Vice and of Virtue—is found, which, from the crossroads at the entrance to the Underworld, lead one (to the left) to the places of torment in the dark Tartarus, where the Furies rage among various monsters; the other (to the right), instead, to the pleasant and luminous Elysian Fields, to eternal joy of feasts, dances, and flowers (cf. Aristophanes, in Koch, Comic. fragm., I, 517; the Elysian Fields, at the borders of the Ocean, already known to Homer: Od., IV, 563-89). Contemporary with this conception of the Underworld was the belief in the souls, which, led to the underworld by Hermes (called, for this function Ψυχοποιητός = guide of souls; cf. Od., XXIV, 1, 3, 5, 6), presented themselves to be examined and assigned to the most suitable place by an infernal judge.
5. Rome
The information regarding the most ancient Roman beliefs about the afterlife is quite scarce. An element that is probably truly indigenous and archaic is that concerning the mundus (q.v.), which (cf. Festus, s.v.) was a pit dug into the ground, with a vaulted roof, into which only one person could descend. It was consecrated to the two infernal deities Dis Pater and Proserpina (corresponding to the Greek Pluto and Persephone), and the days on which it was opened were considered religious, i.e., inauspicious, because then “it is as if the door of the sad and infernal gods were opened” (Macrobius, Sat., I, xvi, 18-19). Thus, it is perhaps not rash to consider that this mundus, a point of communication between the world of the living and the underworld, corresponded precisely to those caves in Greek religion that provided access to the realm of the dead.Nevertheless, similar places existed elsewhere; in fact, near Cumae, on the shores of Lake Avernus, a cave—which Virgil (Aen., VI, 126) defines as “ianua Ditis”—led directly into the infernal region.
- 6. _Groups and persons that_