What does "Lethe" mean?

[rahvin]

it's not that i want to be a spoilsport, but cocytus actually was (still is, if it exists at all) a lake, not a river. it was placed at very bottom of hell and its waters were frozen all the time.
all traitors were stuck eternally with their bodies under the ice, leaving out just the head or sometimes torso - according to whom exactly they did betray while living. lucifer himself, upon falling from grace, was the first to start the under-ice fashion, being stuck upside down in the very center of the frozen lake.

curiously enough, all of this wasn't made up by some scandinavian black metal band, but by a long-dead poet from tuscany. among his other accomplishments were a series of utterly boring sonnets describing how his make-believe young lover would some day guide him all the way to heaven, if he knew how to behave. please note that such young lover had already died of a popular disease.

rahvin.

 

[mourningstar]

Originally posted by rahvin
cocytus actually was (still is, if it exists at all) a lake, not a river. it was placed at very bottom of hell and its waters were frozen all the time.

you sure? i think the name "cocytus" refers to a river, even if -in dante's inferno- it forms, at the end of its run, a frozen surface.
i guess it ends into a lake (same name) because of some bla bla bla (it was more suggestive to fancy, more scenographical and, of course, it could contain a lot of people ).

 

[rahvin]

dante's inferno is what i mostly refer to speaking of hell, because, you know, i haven't exactly been there to tell which is which.

in the comedy there are references to a river and a lake, and it is stated that the name of the latter is cocito. one could obviously assume that the river would share the name, but no sources have been explicit on the matter, unless lucifer told you anything recently.

rahvin.

 

[|ngenius]

It seems so pleasant to take a bath in that lake... and it's not strange that that poet (surely addicted to something similar to natural drugs) wish to know the way to heaven (nowadays, smoking "smiley cigarretes" you can think similar paranoias). Hehehehehhehe.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To smoke sucks!!!!