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[513] ἔνθα must really mean ‘at the entrance to the house of Hades.’

εἰς Ἀχέροντα. Pausanias (1. 17) thinks that the scenery of the Homeric “νέκυια” is taken from the Acherusian lake in Thesprotia, with its rivers Acheron and Cocytus. The truth may lie just the other way; and the rivers may have got their names from the national poetry. But there can be no doubt that the natural scenery of Greece is reproduced in the description of Hades. The gloomy valley, and the plunge that the Arcadian Styx made over its rocks; the gorge of the Acheron near Suli, the subterranean channels that drained a lake or swallowed a river, suggest the picture given here; just as the scenery at Baiae, the laurelplantations, and the grand palaces at Rome re-appear in Virgil's more artificial description. But the Styx is the great river of the nether-world; originally, we may suppose, the only one. This passage which introduces the ‘river of Miseries’ (“Ἀχέρων ἄχεα βροτοῖσι πορθμεύειPind. Fr.120), the ‘river of Howling’ (“πολυκώκυτοι Ἀίδαο δόμοι” Theogn. 214), and the ‘river of Flaming Fire’ (an evident reminiscence of the lava-stream), is probably a later invention.

Πυριφλεγέθων τε ῥέουσι Κώκυτός θ̓. When the plural verb stands between substantives of the singular number, the grammarians call the figure “σχῆμα Ἀλκμανικόν”, as Eustath. says, “διὰ τὸ τὸ Ἀλκμᾶνα κατακόρως αὐτῷ χρῆσθαι”. We have too few remains of Alcman to enable us to criticise this statement, but one instance of a similar construction occurs in the fragments we possess, “Κάστωρ ὠκέων πώλων ἐλατῆρες καὶ Πολυδεύκης”. Other instances in Homer are Il.5. 774; 20.138; Od.14. 216.

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