Second River of Dante’s Inferno. Like the other infernal rivers, it takes its source from Old Man of Crete’s tears that drip from a crack (“taking their course from rock to rock into this depth, / where they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon” Inf. 14, 115-116).
In the Comedy, the poet describes the Styx when he reaches the limits of the fourth circle of Hell and sees a source “that bubbles up and flows / into a channel it makes for itself” (Inf. 7, 101-102), and descends “accompanied by its murky waves” (v. 104) until it reaches “malignant, ashen slopes” (v. 107) and “drains out into the swamp called Styx” (v. 108) which encircles the city of Dis like a crown. Several terms are used to describe it: a “bog” in v. 110 and in Inf. 8, 21; with “filthy waves,” Inf. 8, 10; a “stagnant swamp,” v. 31; “this soup,” v. 53; “turbid waves,” Inf. 9, 64; a “primeval swamp,” v. 74; “wretched way,” v. 100; or simply as “the water,” Inf. 8, 16 and 30; or a “lake,” v. 54; and “black mire,” Inf. 7, 124.
In the narrative, Dante recounts crossing the swamp, in the company of Virgil, on the boat of Phlegyas (Inf. 8, 28). The demon is called by the signal of a high tower (v. 2) that serves as an outpost on the shores of the city of Dis. During the crossing, the angry Filippo Argenti clings to the boat of Phlegyas (Inf. 8, 31-63).
Dante makes Styx the instrument of an infernal punishment: he sees “people with angry faces in that bog, / naked, their bodies smeared with mud” (Inf. 7, 110-111). As Virgil explains, these are the souls overcome with anger, who beat themselves up “with their hands, / their heads, their chests and feet, / and tore each other with their teeth” (112-114). Near the wrathful reside the slothful, hidden in the depths of the swamp. Commentators of the Comedy, for their part, count four types of damned souls languishing in the waters of Styx: on the surface reside the wrathful and the superb; at the bottom are the sullen and the jealous.
In Greek and Latin mythology, the Styx is an infernal river. Hesiod (Theogony 777-806) speaks of a stream, called “styx,” which flows from the rocks that make up the home of a terrible goddess (στυγερὴ θεά), the only resident of Tartarus. Its water is manipulated by the gods to ratify their solemn oaths, the value of which can be seen in the harshness of the penalties for transgression: one year of “insensitivity” and nine years of banishment from the assembly of gods. Hesiod explains (383 ff.) that the use of the Styx in oath rituals was established by Zeus in gratitude for the help given by the nymph Styx in his fight against the Titans. For Homer (Odyssey X 514), the Styx refers to the whole world of the dead. Its current generates the Cocytus which, with the Phlegethon, leads to Acheron. In Plato (Phaedo 52), the “Styx” is a swampy place into which the Cocytus flows, a river road that carries the souls of homicide to the plain of Acherusia located in Tartarus, where it finds its source. The ancients debate the relationship between terrestrial and otherworldly rivers — Phaedo discusses it, and Aristotle refutes it. These reflections are undoubtedly nourished by ancient traditional beliefs which often conceive that the Styx (like the other otherworldly rivers) is the access to the world of the dead. Such a conception is conveyed, notably, in the Iliad (II 755) where the river Titaresios, in Thessaly, is described as a current that derives from the waters of the Styx. Similarly, Herodotus (VI 74) speaks of a watering place at Nonacris, in Acadia, as a Stygian spring.
All these different traditions come together in the Comedy
through the poetry of Virgil, who represents this river as a swamp that encircles the cité de Dis: Cocyti stagna alta vides Stygiamque paludem, / di cuius iurare timent et fallere numen” (Aen. VI, 323-324).
Consult the entry of the Enciclopedia Dantesca in Italian.
Entry taken from the Enciclopedia Dantesca published by the Istituto Treccani — Texts revised by the Centre d’études médiévales of the Université de Montréal.
Editing: Gabrielle Hamelin, Martyna Kander.
English translation: Brittany Buscio.