Jan. 23rd, 2025

sdi: Oil painting of the Heliconian Muse whispering inspiration to Hesiod. (Default)

Ἑρμείας ἀκάκητα κατ’ εὐρώεντα κέλευθα.
πὰρ δ’ ἴσαν Ὠκεανοῦ τε ῥοὰς καὶ λευκάδα πέτρην,
ἠδὲ παρ’ Ἠελίοιο Πύλας καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων
ἤϊσαν: αἶψα δ’ ἵκοντο κατ’ ἀσφοδελὸν λειμῶνα,
ἔνθα τε ναίουσι ψυχαί, εἴδωλα καμόντων.

Beneficent Hermeias [led the souls of the suitors] down the moldy ways:
they went past the currents of Okeanos and the white rock,
past the Gates of the Sun and the land of dreams,
and soon they came to a meadow of asphodel,
where souls live, the reflections of worn-out men.

(Homer, Iliad XXIV 10–4, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)


I much prefer the Hesiodic map of the end of the world, but Homer's seems to me to be no less valid:

  • Okeanos is the night sky and the white rock is the Moon, demarcating the end of the material (e.g. "sublunary") world.

    (Translators don't usually seem to know what to do with λευκάδα πέτρην: I've seen "white rock," "rock of Leukas," and "Lefkada," this last being an island in the Ionian sea, and the birthplace and namesake of Lafcadio Hearn. But the last is silly, since Lefkada isn't even in Okeanos, and anyway we're speaking here of εὐρώεντα κέλευθα "the moldy ways," which are beyond earthly sight.)

  • The Gates of the Sun are 𓈌 akhet (cf. Hesiodic Akheron), that place immediately beyond the eastern and western horizon where the Sun comes from at dawn and goes to at dusk, the threshold between Earth and Haides (cf. Egyptian 𓇽 duat).

  • Haides itself consists of three locations: the land of dreams is closest and refers to that part of the world of Water which is densest (e.g. the lower part of the astral world, between the Moon and Saturn) and which mortals go to when they sleep; the meadows of asphodel is moderate and refers to that part of the world of Water which is least dense (e.g. the upper part of the astral world, between Saturn and the sphere of fixed stars) and which mortals go to when they die; and finally, the Elusion fields is distant and refers to the world of Air which mortals go to when they apotheosize (whether by love, cf. Menelaos; by virtue, cf. Rhadamanthus; or by deed, cf. Herakles).

June 2025

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