The Styx is generally considered to be one of the most prominent and central rivers of the underworld and is also the most widely known out of all the rivers.Their names were meant to reflect the emotions associated with death. There are six main rivers that are visible both in the living world and the underworld. Orpheus and Heracles are the only two humans that enter and left the underworld alive. The only way for humans to communicate with the dead was to suspend time and their normal life to reach Hades, the place beyond immediate perception and human time. The dead are aware of both the past and the future, and in poems describing Greek heroes, the dead helped move the plot of the story by prophesying and telling truths unknown to the hero. Hades itself was free from the concept of time. However, this view of the underworld was not universal – Homer depicts the dead keeping their familiar faces. They are indistinguishable from each other, and it is impossible to tell who was wealthy or important in the living world. Lucian described the people of Hades as simple skeletons. They did not lead any sort of active life in the underworld – they were exactly the same as they were in life. Therefore, those who had died in battle were eternally blood-spattered in the underworld and those who had died peacefully were able to remain that way. The souls in the underworld did not age or really change in any sense. The idea of progress did not exist in the Greek underworld – at the moment of death, the psyche was frozen, in experience and appearance. The original Greek idea of afterlife is that, at the moment of death, the soul is separated from the corpse, taking on the shape of the former person, and is transported to the entrance of the underworld. The underworld itself-sometimes known as Hades, after its patron god-is described as being either at the outer bounds of the ocean or beneath the depths or ends of the earth. It is considered the dark counterpart to the brightness of Mount Olympus with the kingdom of the dead corresponding to the kingdom of the gods. Hades is a realm invisible to the living, made solely for the dead. The others entities that have control of the underworld are the Primordials Achlys, Nyx, Erebus & Tartarus along with their children, Hecate, Hermes, the judges of the underworld (Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus), Melinoe, Styx, and the Daemon Eurynomos along with many others. 2.3 Taenarum - Entrance of the Underworld.
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