Real Places Ancient Greeks Believed Led To The Underworld

Some places actually seem as if they could be a place where the living world comes to an end, and Cape Tainaron (also spelled Cape Taenarum), located at the southernmost point of Greece’s Peloponnese, fits that bill quite nicely. There, in one of its caves, one of Heracles’ greatest feats occurred: his trip down to Hades to steal Cerberus.

The Greek tourist Pausanias came to visit in the 2nd century A.D., and though he was familiar with the whole Heracles-and-Cerberus incident, he decided to go take a look at the supposed opening for himself. He found that there was no tunnel leading down anywhere. Doubt set in.

Tainaron was also said to be a nekromanteion, or ‘oracle of the dead’, where people would come to speak with their dead loved ones. That might make sense, since the site was associated with Hades, but there is little concrete evidence to support that claim.

Pausanias may have struggled to find the cave at Tainaron, but you won’t have much trouble finding this one: the Acheron river. Like several other rivers (the Styx, Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Lethe), this body of water was closely associated with Hades in Greek mythology. Side note: a river called the Acheron does indeed exist today; it runs through Epirus in northwestern Greece.

The Greek historian Herodotus also describes an oracle of the dead that existed in Thesprotia, the area linked with Acheron. He explains that Periander, tyrant of Corinth, dispatched men to consult this oracle because he was seeking a response from his deceased wife, Melissa. Melissa’s spirit manifested, but initially declined to speak since the clothes buried with her had not been burned, meaning she had nothing to wear in the realm of the dead.

In the twentieth century, archaeologist Sotirios Dakaris unearthed a vast complex near contemporary Mesopotamos and determined it to be the Nekromanteion of Acheron. The site featured fortified walls and underground chambers, which Dakaris took as support for his conclusion. Other researchers have not been convinced. They suggested that the complex was simply a heavily fortified Hellenistic country house. An oracle of the dead may have existed somewhere around here; this place just might not have been it.

And of course, no ancient Greek location of the underworld is complete without someone attempting to link it to Odysseus. In The Odyssey, Odysseus performs a ritual allowing him to talk to the dead including the prophet Tiresias, former comrades, and even his own mother. Because Epirus had a real Acheron and lore about the dead, some have attempted to place his journey there. I’d like to believe this one was true as well, but Homer never actually says that. The extant complex at Mesopotamos was built centuries later anyway, so we don’t exactly have Odysseus’ precise GPS coordinates.

Near Lerna, in the Peloponnese, was the Alcyonian Lake, sometimes identified as an entrance to Hades. According to Pausanias, in Argos they said that when Dionysus went down through the lake to look for his deceased mother Semele, he managed to bring her up out of Hades. That’s some next-level heroism. Legends about the depth of the lake may have helped sell the idea of it being a portal to Hades.

To make matters worse, Lerna was also Hydra territory. It gave its name to the Lernaean Hydra, a many-headed beast that Heracles battled. It was not really thought of as an additional entrance to Hades; it just had a strange aura about it.

In Heraclea Pontica, a Greek colony on the Black Sea coast in modern-day Turkey, locals also claimed a nearby cave was linked to Heracles’ subterranean journey to capture Cerberus. Multiple sites for the exact same tale might sound to us like someone got the tale wrong, but the Greeks didn’t seem so concerned with that! Cities commonly affixed renowned heroes and myths to their own locales (naturally), and Heraclea’s name alone attests to its people’s devotion to Heracles.

I thought myths were more like the Bible, in which there was a canonical account. But no! Tainaron could say that Heracles went to Hades from their city, while Heraclea Pontica could also claim that Heracles came through their region. Both versions existed together peacefully. There was one kingdom of Hades, but there was obviously more than one entrance to it!

And then you have Eleusis, the location of the well-known Eleusinian Mysteries. The esoteric ceremonies held there were dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, meaning that death, abduction, and return were already built in. There was also a Ploutonion inside the sanctuary. This was linked to Plouton, another name for the Greek god of the underworld Hades, and the Ploutonion had natural cracks in the rock that were open to the shrine. Unlike some supposed gateways on this list, this connection wasn’t something modern tourists just came up with. The underworld was actually associated with this place.

But did that mean this was where Hades dragged Persephone belowground? Not necessarily. Several traditions locate Persephone’s abduction at different sites, and there’s no clear evidence in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that the cave at Eleusis, still in existence today, is the place in question. However, that doesn’t mean the Ploutonion didn’t have associations with the underworld.

It seems the Greeks didn’t have enough places where they could put entrances to the underworld around the Mediterranean. Cumae, a Greek town in southern Italy, was full of caves, volcanoes and the strangely named Lake Avernus. It’s not surprising that the place later became known for underworld stories. However, there’s a twist: the kind of story we’re more familiar with now actually rose to prominence among the Romans. While Cumae was Greek, the tradition of it being a gateway to the dead shifted and expanded through time and culture.

For those who have read Virgil’s Aeneid, this plot will sound familiar. In book six, Aeneas arrives in Cumae, where he meets the Cumaean Sibyl and secures the Golden Bough that will allow him access to the underworld. He then enters the realm of the dead, encountering a number of them before finally speaking with the spirit of his father, Anchises. This is among the most iconic journeys into Hades in ancient literature, yet one significant caveat must be noted: the Aeneid is an epic poem. Yes, Lake Avernus and Cumae exist, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that Aeneas made them his own portal to the underworld.

As it turns out, Odysseus has been linked to every haunted lake in the ancient Mediterranean. Lake Avernus has been suggested as the site where Odysseus met the dead in The Odyssey, and the landscape certainly fits the description. Homer doesn’t say that Odysseus ever visited the place, though. People have been matching Homer’s fiction to actual locations ever since the classical era, but even the ancients disagreed about some of the details. So Avernus is merely another possible entrance.

Cumae also has an ancient passage now called Antro della Sibilla, or Cave of the Sibyl. Pretty obvious right? Not so fast. The ancients did associate a Sibyl with Cumae, but we don’t really know what purpose some of the cave systems and tunnels in the area served. Several have been linked with the famous prophetess over the years. Archaeology and myth at this point are intertwined enough that it’s not entirely clear which is which.

In Acharaca, in Asia Minor, there was another place with another underworld-sounding name: The Charonion. Yes, that Charon. The man who ferries dead souls over the rivers of the underworld. In this case, ancient writers say it was a sanctuary of Pluto and Kore, Persephone’s other name, with the cave known for some subterranean phenomena and health cures. But calling it a literal gateway to Hades may be going too far.

And finally, here’s the part of this list that could kill you. There was a Greco-Roman city in Turkey called Hierapolis, with a place of worship called the Ploutonion. According to the descriptions left by ancient writers, animals would suddenly collapse and die near an opening in the ground there. But priests attending the site could come close and be just fine. Very Hades-coded! However, scientists have confirmed that carbon dioxide seeps up through fault lines underneath the Ploutonion and accumulates around ground level in lethal amounts. I’d be blaming Hades too, if I saw live animals drop dead like that.

How did the priests at Hierapolis make it out alive? Sadly, for those of us who would like to believe they had some kind of special power, there’s a much simpler answer. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it can pool near the ground and the head of a standing adult can remain in safe air if things are just right. Perhaps the priests knew exactly where to stand, for how long they could stay, or even what time of day was best. It’s not possible to piece together every one of their tricks, but they likely knew the sanctuary’s little death trap far better than the audience watching from afar.

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