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The Acheron () is a river located in the Epirus region of northwest Greece. Its source is near the village Zotiko, in the southwestern part of the Ioannina regional unit It flows into the Ionian Sea in Ammoudia, near Parga.
Mythology In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron was known as the river of pain, and was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. In the Homeric poems the Acheron was described as a river of Hades, into which Cocytus and Phlegethon both flowed.[1][2] The Roman poet Virgil called it the principal river of Tartarus, from which the Styx and Cocytus both sprang.[3] The newly-dead would be ferried across the Acheron by Charon in order to enter the Underworld.[4] The Suda describes the river as "a place of healing, not a place of punishment, cleansing and purging the sins of humans."[5] According to later traditions, Acheron had been a son of Helios and either Gaia or Demeter, who had been turned into the Underworld river bearing his name after he refreshed the Titans with drink during their contest with Zeus. By this myth, Acheron is also the father of Ascalaphus by either Orphne[6] or Gorgyra.[7] The river called Acheron with the nearby ruins of the Necromanteion is 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. Acheron river 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 Book VII, line 312[8] he gives to Juno the famous saying, flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo: 'If I cannot deflect the will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.' The same words were used by Sigmund Freud as the dedicatory motto for his seminal book The Interpretation of Dreams, figuring Acheron as psychological underworld beneath the conscious mind. 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. Those who were neutral in life sit on the banks. Popular Culture / Fiction The name Acheron also takes on a proper noun in the novelization of James Cameron's sequel 'Aliens' in 1986 by Alan Dean Foster (Paperback / Warner Books Inc (Mm) [June 1986] ISBN-10: 0446301396 / ISBN-13: 978-0446301398). Where in the film, the alien planet is referred to solely as LV-426, in the novel, LV-426 is revealed to Lt. Ellen Ripley to have the actual name of Acheron where a colony has recently been founded, but this is news to Ripley who'd been in hypersleep for the previous 57 years. References External links bg: bs:Aheront (rijeka) br:Ac'heron ca:Aqueront cs:Acher n cy:Afon Acheron de:Acheron el: es:Aqueronte eo:A erono eu:Akeronte fa: fr:Ach ron gl:Aqueronte hr:Aheront (rijeka) id:Akheron is:Akkeron it:Acheronte ka: lt:Acheronas hu:Akher n nl:Acheron (mythologie) ja: pl:Acheron (mitologia) pt:Aqueronte ro:R ul Aheron ru: sk:Acher n (mytol gia) sl:Aheron sr: sh:Aheront (mitologija) fi:Akheron sv:Acheron tr:Acheron (mitoloji) uk: zh:
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