COSMOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY
The object of this chapter is to address the issue of light and darkness and its relationship to the topography and cosmology of Homer, Hesiod and Mimnermus. It will be argued that there are three ways to describe light or its absence: sunlight, night (defined as absence of sunlight), and darkness as a quality of the beyond. The latter differs from the other two and receives a different name as erebos and zophos. We shall see that, despite some slight variations in our texts, a fairly coherent cosmography may be reconstructed (see figure 13.1).
ODYSSEUS’ JOURNEY TO HADES
Odysseus’s journey to the afterworld is described twice. First Circe announces to him that he must cross the river ocean by ship and leave the world of the living behind. Then, she says, he will come to the opposite bank, at the grove of Persephone where he will leave his ship. Next, he will proceed on foot to Hades until he reaches a spot where two rivers, Kokytos and Pyriflegethon, meet and flow into Acheron. The confluence of the two rivers is marked by a stone; at this spot he is to dig a pit and invoke the dead from under the earth (see figure 13.2).
The second description of this journey stems from Odysseus himself (11. 1–22). He and his men sailed to the end of the ocean and arrived at the demos of the Kimmerians, a community enveloped in a cloud of perpetual mist, never penetrated by the sun’s rays. The Kimmerians, according to this story, are not located at the north, as already some later ancient authors seemed to have thought (cf. Hdt. 4. 11), but on the other side of the cosmic river ocean.1 It is important to note already here that the region beyond the river ocean is not illuminated by the sun, since the latter has been left behind. Consequently, some kind of twilight illuminates Odysseus’s steps ahead. As we shall see, this is the erebos of Hades. Finally, the party walked along the banks of the river and reached the spot where they met the shades.
Figure 13.1. Hades and Erebos
Figure 13.2. Odyssey Map Routes
In both descriptions, the journey is imagined as taking place on a horizon- tal level and not as a descent. Four basic steps are involved. Step one entails the crossing of the ocean; step two involves a walk along the banks of the ocean; step three is the arrival at the confluence of two rivers. Step four involves digging a pit. Of all the steps, the first one is the most crucial since it requires the crossing of the river, the boundary between the living and the dead.
We get a third description of the journey in the last book of the Odyssey. This time the travelers are the souls (psychai) of the murdered suitors led by Hermes. They too walk along the bank of the river ocean, pass by a white rock, then come to the gates of the sun, pass the demos of dreams and finally arrive at a meadow of asphodels (24. 10–14).2 These series of landmarks differ from those described by Circe, and yet they do not contradict her narrative since in all cases the river ocean is the boundary. Here too there is no mention of descent.
A map of the Odyssean afterworld has been reconstructed on the basis of these narratives on figure 13.1. The river ocean is the great boundary between the living and the other world. Parallels may be found in Near Eastern literature.3
We see there that the ocean is at the edges of the inhabited world, according to Hesiod and Homer (Hes. Th. 242; Hom. Il. 14. 200–1). Along its banks we find not only the dead, but also the blessed heroes. This means that the ocean is the end of one world; at the same time, it is the beginning of another.
What is the space occupied by the sun in these two worlds? It will be argued that the sun exists only within the created universe, contained with the boundaries circumscribed by ocean. The latter is the boundary of the sun’s orbit. Therefore the sun does not go to Hades according to Archaic cosmology.
In the last book of the Odyssey, the souls of the suitors travel along the banks of the ocean and pass by the gate of the sun (Od. 24. 12), which means that the boundaries of the inhabited universe were marked by the sun-gate. There is no mention of the sun crossing the ocean. But there is even stronger evidence that he does not go to Hades. The key is a passage in the Odyssey in which the sun expresses his displeasure with the gods because Odysseus’s men have killed his cows. He threatens to go on strike and shine among the dead. Zeus is worried and sees to it that the order of the universe is maintained by granting the sun his wishes immediately (12. 377–88). It is thus clear that the sun’s presence in Hades is a sign of cosmic disorder.
Next Circe’s island will be discussed; it will be shown that it is a kind of gate of the sun because it is close to sunrise and sunset. That the west and east points may collapse into one single location is counterintuitive; nevertheless this is made clear in the text. Odysseus is disorientated on Circe’s island because he cannot discern where the sun rises and where it sets. ‘My friends,’ he says, ‘we do not know where East is, nor where the bright sun goes down under the earth’ (10. 190–92; transl. E. V. Rieu). It follows from this passage that east and west are very close together; so close, in fact, that Odysseus cannot tell them apart. This puzzle is solved, if we envisage Circe’s isle as an interface between the inhabited world and Hades. It is a conceptual scheme by which the passage of the sun is imagined as a double gate and not as a geographical polarity. Two pieces of evidence support this view. Firstly, Hesiod talks about the House of Night as being very close to the House of Day and describes the paths of day and night as contiguous (Th. 750–56). Secondly, there exists good Egyptian parallels that testify to the fact that the sun’s exit and entry points in the inhabited world were imagined as lying side by side, a double gate.
It is thus comprehensible that Homer saw Circe’s island as a passage for the sun’s course from day to night and as the boundary of the inhabited universe beyond which lies the world of the dead. This makes Circe a kind of guardian of the boundary. She deters anybody from passing through her island to Hades; but if anyone passes, as Odysseus and his men do, they must return there before they go on with their journey (see figure 13.2).
There is more evidence that the sun does not cross the ocean. When Odysseus and his men sail away from the island of Circe, the sun sets and does not rise again until the return of the company from the beyond (12. 8). Thus, Odysseus seems to have moved beyond the realm of the sun’s orbit when he sails across the ocean to Hades.4
With this explanation in mind we understand why Circe’s island is named the house of dawn and the rising sun (12. 3–4), or the ‘ground of the dances of dawn.’ Circe herself is a progeny of the sun (10. 138).
We conclude that the expression ‘gates of the sun’ in the Odyssey (24. 12) affirms that the boundaries of the sun’s orbit are by the river ocean. But now another question arises: If the sun does not go to Hades, where does he go at night?
A fragment of Mimnermus supplies us with the answer. The sun sleeps in a golden chamber by the banks of the ocean (Mimnermus, fr. 7, Edmonds). We are further told that the sun sleeps at night in a winged barque made by Hephaistus himself. He travels along the ocean from the west, the land of Hesperides, to the east, the land of the Ethiopians. In short, the sun travels along the river from west to east and then climbs upward. It is important to stress that in no case does he cross the ocean; he travels along it and climbs up the vault of heaven (fr. 10, Edmonds). The universe is envisaged as threedimensional in Mimnermus.
By combining the narrative of the Odyssey with Hesiod and the fragment of Mimnermus, we have reached three important conclusions. First, that the beyond is imagined as lying on the other side of a boundary. Second, that there is also a vertical dimension to the cosmos as is clear from Mimnermus. Third, Hades is a sunless universe.
Now we move to Tartaros. Where is it located? On the one hand, it is clearly imagined in the bottom of a universe. It is an abominable place, a pit extremely broad and deep. ‘Broad Tartaros is deep’ says Zeus to Hera in the Iliad (8. 477–81). In another passage, it is specified that Tartaros is as deep below Hades as the sky is high above the earth (Il. 8. 13–16 cf. also 8. 478–81; 14. 279). Hesiod modifies this spatial description just a little, saying that it is located as far below the earth as the earth is below the sky. He divides the vertical stretch into nine units, corresponding to nine nights and days. If an anvil fell from heaven, he writes, it would arrive in Tartaros on the tenth (Th. 719–21). Thus, both Homer and Hesiod postulate a vertical dimension of the universe with Tartaros at its bottom. Pindar describes it as deep (bathys; Paian 4. 40).
Hesiod says it is at the ends of the earth (esxata gaies), which might be taken to imply a horizontal, flat universe (Th. 731, 807–14). Yet the matter is not so simple because in another passage, he describes both a horizontal and a vertical axis simultaneously: under the earth and at its edges, at its limits (hypo chthoni, ep eschatie megales en peirasi gaies, Th. 617–23). Homer in the Iliad locates Tartaros at the edges of the earth (peirata gaies) (Il. 8. 478–81).
There can be only one possible conclusion: the vertical and the horizontal models are not incompatible but complementary. The universe is threedimensional.
Consider also an additional passage which has to do with the location of Thetis’s home in the Iliad. We get a description of both her upward journey from a cave at the bottom of the sea to the heights of heaven, and the other way around, from the depths of the sea to the heights of Olympus (Il. 1. 496–97, 24. 95–99). This is clearly a vertical journey. However, we also get the information from Hephaistus’s mouth that her habitat is situated next to the river Ocean, by its ineffable streams (Il. 18. 402–5). Since the Ocean is located at the edges of the universe, we may ask the question how can Thetis live both under and beyond?
Again, the answer must be that the inhabited universe is three-dimensional, and that it is imagined as a sphere, perhaps like an onion with many layers. The ocean would surround the inhabited world like the outer layer of an onion. It would contain and surround the orbit of the sun, in the sense that the sun moves only within this sphere. But there is an additional layer outside the ocean, this is Hades and Erebos and Zofos, to which we shall turn next. One more question must be asked before that, however. Is Tartaros limited or limitless? Despite the fact that it is deep and broad, Hesiod does suggest that it is confined within walls of bronze; night pours around him; above it is the bottom of the earth and sea. (Th. 726–28).
Erebos is a very interesting concept. In the unabridged version of Liddell-Scott it is defined as a path from Hades. In the abridged version (1994) it is ‘a place of nether darkness, above the still deeper Hades.’
None of these definitions can be right. Erebos is nowhere a path, nor is it above Hades. West’s definition is much more precise. He says that erebos is a region of darkness as opposed to the realm of light. He notes that erebos as well as zofos are Semitic loan words derived from ereb and s.bi (sps= zfs=zofos) signifying the going down of the sun.5 This is a good starting point. Erebos may be defined as the ‘complete absence of sunlight’ to be distinguished from night (nyx) which bears within herself the potential of day.
This differentiation matches very well the genealogy of lineage in the deities in Hesiod’s Theogony. Erebos is one of the primeval deities born directly from Chaos (Th. 123).6 It is clearly distinguished from Nyx, its sister and consort. Erebos, then, may be defined as primeval perpetual darkness as is also Nyx, although the latter is female and gives birth to day (Th. 125).
The primeval darkness characterizes both Hades and Tartaros. Hesiod mentions that an insolent man is thrown into erebos (Th. 515); this clearly means that erebos is equated with the netherworld. It is not clear, however, as West notes, whether Hesiod means Hades or Tartaros; perhaps it is not so significant.7
In the Odyssey erebos designates the location from which the dead come to speak to Odysseus (hypex’ erebeus, 11. 35). It is also used to designate direction, namely the sunset of the west (Od. 10. 528). Persephone is sent and brought out of erebo s in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Hymn Dem. 335, 349, 409). In Sophocles’s Antigone, Erebos is located under the sea (587) and in Oedipus at Colonus, the hero prays to the erebos of Tartaros, as though they are the same (1390).
It is clear from the above that erebos became another term for the spatial designation of Hades. And although the two have different nuances, they have one important factor in common: they are both outside the inhabited universe. We conclude that erebos qualifies the region where the sun does not reach and which eventually becomes synonymous with Hades. If we use the analogy of the onion, erebos designates its outmost layer. Note that Hesiod calls it es- chatie, the edge (Eschatie pros Nyktos, Th. 275).
Zophos means much the same. Persephone goes under at shadowy zophos (Hymn Dem. 80). ‘How have you come to shadow-like zophos’? Odysseus asks Elpenor, implying that z ofos is not only a quality of light but a place as well (Od. 11, 57). We also find the expression ‘turned towards Zofos.’8
In conclusion, light and darkness can be tied to Archaic Greek cosmology. Absence of sunlight and complete absence of light have been shown here to be two different concepts differentiated in Greek by the words erebos/ zophos and nyx.
1. W. B. Standford, The Odyssey of Homer. Edited with General and Grammati- cal Introduction, Commentary and Indexes (London, 1964); N. Marinatos, “The Cosmic Journey of Odysseus,” Numen 48 (2000): 383–416; S. Alexiou, “Από τον Κόσμο του Ομήρου. Θρύλος και Αλήθεια στην Γεωγραφία της Οδύσσειας,” Nea Estia 163 (2008): 64–76.
2. N. Marinatos, “ The So-called Hell and Sinners in the Odyssey and Homeric Cosmology,” Numen 56 (2009): 185–97 .
3. N. Wyatt, Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Ancient Near East. The Biblical Seminar 85 (Sheffield, 2001), 143.
4. Marinatos, “Cosmic Journey,” 383–416.
5. M. L. West. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Early Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), 159.
6. West, The East Face of Helicon, 197.
7. M. L. West. Hesiod Theogony: Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary (Oxford, 1966), 308.
8. West, The East Face of Helicon, 153
Alexiou, S. “Από τον Κόσμο του Ομήρου. Θρύλος και Αλήθεια στην Γεωγραφία της Οδύσσειας. Nea Estia 163 (2008): 64–76.
Marinatos, N. “The Cosmic Journey of Odysseus.” Numen 48 (2000): 383–416.
——. “ The So-called Hell and Sinners in the Odyssey and Homeric Cosmology.” Numen 56 (2009): 185–97 .
Standford, W. B. 1964. The Odyssey of Homer. Edited with General and Grammatical Introduction, Commentary and Indexes. London, 1964.
West, M. L. Hesiod Theogony: Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford, 1966.
———. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Early Poetry and Myth.Oxford, 1997.
Wyatt, N. Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Ancient Near East. The Biblical Seminar 85. Sheffield, 2001.