[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] This is the sort of thing I said as I stood over the ditch-- Because I remembered quite well what Circe had advised me to do, That witch who knows every medicament the wide world has to offer-- But then a huge wave swelled up from the lion-taming Acheron, 40
Cocytus and Lethe and the great Polyphlegethon, And a host of dead came round to stand with me over the ditch.
As lower Hell is represented as a lake of fire, or as a deep pit underground, and as Christian Hell inherited the rivers and swamps of classical Hades, Acheron, Styx,
Cocytus, etc., a bridge would be a logical artefact (similar to the boat of the dead) to cross this obstacle.
His words recall the spiritual topography of Hades, the region defined by the rivers of dread--Styx, Acheron,
Cocytus, and Phlegethon.
In Greek mythology five rivers of the underworld are mentioned: Acheron,
Cocytus, Lethe, Phlegethon (or Pyriphlegethon) and which other?
There into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon And
Cocytus, a branch of the water of Styx.
The demonic Orcs, for instance, are summoned out of a region modeled on the Inferno's Ninth Circle, the icebound
Cocytus. This bottomland lies below the tower of the diabolic lord Saruman, a potentate at once devastating yet trapped.
Now on the banks of
Cocytus and sorrowful Acheron will I soon sing my prophecies.
In Dante's pit of Hell, whose floor is the frozen Lake
Cocytus, and where the inhabitants are plunged up to their necks in ice, one hears a similar rage.
Cocytus (one of the rivers that separated Hades flora the world),
Picone suggests a connection between Ovid's frozen sea and Dante's frozen
Cocytus in the Inferno (16-19).
They steeped me thrice in
Cocytus from Hades's shore,
The shift into the Celtic deposits occurs when the unnamed narrator asks "is the Afon Cych / the
Cocytus? / Is Cothi of the quick-set hedge sad / Acheron" (RQ 14; Ms.
The crowd turned on her; she burned as if the fires of
Cocytus were inside her.
