Is it true what they say about Hell? : Pagan Hell

More Hellish Details

There are two specific aspects of Greek mythology which show up in particular in the writings of Dante. Here are more details on these:

Tartarus

From the Wikipedia.org article Tartarus

While, according to Greek mythology, Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus, the ruling Titan, came to power he imprisoned the Cyclopes in Tartarus. Some myths also say he imprisoned the three Hecatoncheires (monsters with fifty heads and one hundred arms). Zeus released them to aid in his conflict with the Titan giants. The gods of Olympus eventually defeated the Titans. Many, but not all of the Titans, were cast into Tartarus. Cronus, Epimetheus, Metis, Menoetius, and Prometheus are some Titans who were banished to Tartarus. In Tartarus, prisoners were guarded by giants, each with 50 enormous heads and 100 strong arms, who were called Hecatonchires. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon, the offspring of Tartarus and Gaia, he threw it, too, into the same pit.

Originally, Tartarus was used only to confine dangers to the gods of Olympus. In later mythologies, Tartarus became the place where the punishment fits the crime. For example Sisyphus, who was punished for telling the father of Aegina, a young woman kidnapped by Zeus for one of his sexual gratifications, where she was and who had initially taken her. Zeus considered this an ultimate betrayal and saw to it that Sisyphus was forced to roll a large boulder up a mountainside, but when he reached the crest, it rolled back down, again and again.

Also found there was Ixion, one of the mortals invited to dine with the gods. Ixion began to lust after Zeus' wife, Hera, and began to caress her under the table, but soon ceased at Zeus' warning. Later that night, having been given a place to sleep, Zeus felt the need to test Ixion's tolerance and willpower. Constructing a cloud-woman to mirror Hera in appearance, Zeus sent her, known as Nephele, to Ixion's bed, whom promptly slept with and impregnanted the false Hera. As his punishment, he was banished to Tartarus to forever roll strapped to a wheel of flames, which represented his burning lust.

Tantalus who was also graciously invited to dine with the gods, felt he should repay them for their kindness and hospitality, but in his pride, decided to see if he could deceive the gods. Tantalus murdered and roasted his son Pelops as a feast for the gods. Demeter, one of the goddesses who preferred to walk with the mortals, graciously accepted the food, but was immediately repulsed when she bit into the left shoulder. The gods all became violently ill and immediately left for Mt. Olympus. As his punishment for such a heinous act, Tantalus was chained to a rock in the middle of a river in Tartarus with a berry bush hanging just out of reach above his head. Cursed with unquenchable thirst and unending hunger, Tantalus constantly tried to reach the water or food, but each time, the water and berries would recede out of his reach for eternity.

According to Plato (c. 400), Rhadamanthus, Aeacus and Minos were the judges of the dead and chose who went to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus judged Asian souls; Aeacus judged European souls and Minos was the deciding vote and judge of the Greek.

Plato also proposes the concept that sinners were cast under the ground to be punished in accordance with their sins the Myth of Er.

Roman Mythology's Tartarus

In Roman mythology, Tartarus is the place where sinners are sent. Virgil describes it in the Aeneid as a gigantic place, surrounded by the flaming river Phlegethon and triple walls to prevent sinners from escaping from it. It is guarded by a hydra with fifty black gaping jaws, which sits at a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamantine, a substance akin to diamond - so hard that nothing will cut through it. Inside, there is a castle with wide walls, and a tall iron turret. Tisiphone, one of the Erinyes who represents revenge, stands guard sleepless at the top of this turret lashing a whip. There is a pit inside which is said to extend down into the earth twice as far as the distance from the lands of the living to Olympus. At the bottom of this pit lie the Titans, the twin sons of Aloeus and many other sinners. Still more sinners are contained inside Tartarus, with punishments similar to those of Greek myth.

The Furies

Detail of pottery illustration of the Furies, c. 340 BC

From the Wikipedia.org article Furies:

In Greek mythology the Erinyes (Ερινύες) or Eumenides (the Romans called them the Furies) were female personifications of vengeance. When a formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes "those who beneath the earth punish whoever has sworn a false oath. The Erinyes are simply an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath" (Burkert 1985 p 198). They were usually said to have been born from the blood of Ouranos when Cronus castrated him. According to a variant account, they issued from an even more primordial level—from Nyx, "Night". Their number is usually left indeterminate, though Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto ("unceasing," who appeared in Virgil's Aeneid), Megaera ("grudging"), and Tisiphone ("avenging murder"). The heads of the Erinyes were wreathed with serpents (compare Gorgon), their eyes dripped with blood, and their whole appearance was horrific and appalling. Sometimes they had the wings of a bat or bird, or the body of a dog.

The Erinyes generally stood for the rightness of things within the standard order; for example, Heraclitus declared that if Helios decided to change the course of the Sun through the sky, they would prevent him from doing so. But for the most part they were understood as the persecutors of mortal men and women who broke "natural" laws. In particular, those who broke ties of kinship through murdering a father (patricide), murdering a brother (fratricide), or other such familial killings brought special attention from the Erinyes. It was believed in early epochs that human beings might not have the right to punish such crimes, instead leaving the matter to the dead man's Erinyes to exact retribution.

The Erinyes were connected with Nemesis as enforcers of a just balance in human affairs. The goddess Nike originally filled a similar role, as the bringer of a just victory. When not stalking victims on Earth, the Furies were thought to dwell in Tartarus, where they applied their tortures to the damned souls there.

Classical mythological version of the Furies, John Singer Sargent, 1921

Dante's alleged vision of Hell, as he described it in The Inferno, included a description of these mythological characters. Here is an illustration of Dante and Virgil viewing the Furies, drawn by August Doré in about 1865 for an edition of The Inferno.

It certainly is not clear how Christians could have accepted Dante's vision as in any way at all credible--do they really believe that pagan myths like this are compatible with the scriptures?? But many did accept his claims, and still have, for over 700 years now!

In fact, many have accepted a version of Hell that is based ultimately on his writings without ever realizing the source of the details they have come to believe.

One of the purposes of this website is to clearly and concisely establish the connection between Dante and his sources, including pagan mythology, so that readers can be freed from believing that his words were "Gospel." Christians need to know what the Bible says about the Afterlife, not what was produced about the topic by the fertile and grotesquely sadistic imagination of a long-dead poet.

This site contains a collection of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may each be used independently for research purposes. But it also is designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole topic, which can be read like a book.