Lethe was the river of forgetting in the Greek underworld, one of the five rivers of the realm of the dead, the stream from which the dead drank to forget their previous lives. The Greek word Lethe (Λήθη) means forgetting or oblivion, and the name is the source of the modern English lethal in the older sense of causing death and of the modern medical sense of causing forgetfulness. The river Lethe is the standard Greek image of the soul’s loss of memory as it enters the underworld, and it became one of the central images of the Orphic and Platonic traditions, in which the soul is said to have drunk from the Lethe before being born into the body, forgetting the divine vision it had in the previous life.
The Five Rivers of the Underworld
In the standard Greek geography of the underworld, there were five rivers, each named for the kind of suffering that the dead endure. The names and the order of naming vary in the different sources, but the standard set is as follows:
- Styx (Στύξ, “hate”): the river of the underworld across which the gods swear their great oaths. The drinking of Styx water was reserved for the most solemn oaths, and the oath of the Styx was the only oath that bound the gods. The river was said to be poisonous, and a single drop would kill a mortal. The river is in the southern part of the underworld, and it is one of the standard features of the Greek afterlife.
- Acheron (Ἀχέρων, “sorrow”): the river of the underworld through which the souls were ferried by Charon, the old ferryman. The myth of Charon and the Acheron is one of the central images of the Greek afterlife, and the coin placed in the mouth of the dead was the fare for the ferry.
- Lethe (Λήθη, “forgetting”): the river from which the dead drank to forget their previous lives. The drinking of the Lethe is the standard Greek image of the soul’s loss of memory.
- Phlegethon (Φλεγέθων, “burning”): the river of fire in the underworld, a stream of fire that burned the souls of the wicked. The river is mentioned in Plato’s Phaedo and in the Aeneid’s underworld.
- Cocytus (Κωκυτός, “wailing”): the river of wailing in the underworld, a tributary of the Acheron. The river is mentioned in Plato’s Phaedo and in the Odyssey, where the shades of the dead are said to wail along its banks.
The five rivers are not all in the same sources. Homer mentions only the Acheron, the Cocytus, and the Styx (in some readings). Hesiod mentions the Styx. The Orphic tradition introduced the Lethe. Plato introduced the full set in the Phaedo, and the Phaedo is the source of the standard five-river geography of the underworld. The Roman poets (Virgil, Ovid, Lucan) preserved the five-river scheme with some variation.
Lethe in the Orphic Tradition
The Orphic tradition is the source of the central importance of Lethe in the Greek afterlife. The Orphics were a Greek mystery cult that emerged in the sixth century BCE, possibly earlier, and that taught that the soul was divine in origin, had been imprisoned in the body as a punishment, and would be released from the cycle of rebirth by initiation into the Orphic rites. The central Orphic doctrine was the doctrine of anamnesis, the soul’s memory of its divine origin, and the central Orphic image was the Lethe, the river of forgetting from which the soul drank before being born.
In the Orphic scheme, the soul in the afterlife is given a choice of two fountains: the fountain of Lethe (forgetting) and the fountain of Memory (Mnemosyne). The soul that drinks of Lethe forgets its previous life and is reborn into a body. The soul that drinks of Memory remembers its divine origin and is released from the cycle of rebirth, living with the gods in the afterlife. The choice is the central ethical moment of the Orphic scheme, and the Orphic rites were designed to help the initiate make the right choice.
This is the Orphic version of the Lethe, and it is the version that became the standard Greek interpretation. In the Homeric underworld, the shades drink of the Lethe only in the sense that they have already forgotten their previous lives; in the Orphic underworld, the soul is given the choice to drink or not to drink, and the choice is the central act of the afterlife. The shift from Homer to Orphism is the shift from a given (the shades forget automatically) to a choice (the soul can choose to remember), and the shift is the source of the modern idea of personal salvation.
Lethe in Plato
Plato made the Lethe the centre of his own doctrine of the soul. In the Phaedrus (244a ff.), the soul is said to have had a vision of the divine forms before being born, and to have forgotten the vision when it entered the body. The forgetting is the Lethe, and the central project of philosophy, for Plato, is to recover the memory. The doctrine of anamnesis (recollection), which is central to the Meno and the Phaedo, is the philosophical version of the Orphic memory.
In the Republic (Book X, 614a ff.), Plato tells the Myth of Er, in which the souls of the dead are said to be assembled in a meadow and to be given the choice of their next life. The souls drink of the river of Unmindfulness (Lethe) before being reborn. Plato makes the drinking of the Lethe a symbol of the forgetting of the philosophical vision, and the central project of the Republic is to be the soul that does not drink.
In the Phaedo (112d ff.), the souls of the dead are said to be sorted into the four rivers of the underworld: the Acheron, the Cocytus, the Pyriphlegethon (the river of fire), and the Lethe. The souls of the wicked go to the rivers of fire, the souls of the saved go to the Acheron, the souls of the ordinary go to the Cocytus, and the souls of the truly blessed drink of the Lethe, in Plato’s account, only in the sense of the absence of memory of suffering, not the loss of the divine vision.
Lethe in the Roman and Christian Worlds
The Roman poets followed the Platonic and Orphic versions. In Virgil’s Aeneid (Book VI), the souls of the dead are assembled in the underworld, and the souls of those who are to be reborn drink of the Lethe from a great cup. The image is the standard Roman one, and the Aeneid is the source of the standard modern interpretation. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book XI), the Lethe is again the source of forgetting, and the souls of the dead drink of the river before being reborn.
The Christian fathers, beginning with the late-antique apologists, identified the Lethe with the forgetfulness of the world, and the drinking of the Lethe became a figure for the loss of the memory of God. The identification is partial — the Christian doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Orphic doctrine of the soul’s imprisonment — but the Lethe was a useful image for the Christian writers, and it appears in the City of God of Augustine and in the Confessions.
Lethe in Modern Literature
The Lethe has had a long afterlife in modern literature. John Milton, in Paradise Lost (Book II), makes the Lethe the source of the soul’s forgetfulness before its rebirth:
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks Forthwith his former state and being forgets, Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
The image is the standard Platonic-Orphic one, and Milton’s Lethe is the source of the most-read modern treatment of the river. Alexander Pope, in The Rape of the Lock (Canto II), uses the Lethe as a figure for the trivialising effects of fashionable society. John Keats, in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, uses the image of the Lethe to talk about the immortality of art: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” The Lethe is the river of forgetting, and the unheard melodies are sweeter because they are not forgotten.
The most-read modern treatment of the Lethe in English is probably Tennyson’s The Lotos-Eaters (1842), in which the sailors on the island of the Lotus-Eaters are tempted to give up their homeward journey and to “forget” the world. The Lotos-Eaters’ song is one of the great Victorian poems, and the “Lethe” of the Lotos is the source of the standard modern image of forgetfulness as a kind of death.
A Note on Reading the Myth
The Lethe is one of the cleanest examples on this site of how a Greek myth changes meaning across time. In the Homeric underworld, the shades forget automatically; in the Orphic underworld, the soul is given a choice; in Plato, the Lethe becomes a symbol of the soul’s loss of the philosophical vision; in the Christian fathers, the Lethe becomes a symbol of the soul’s loss of God; in Milton, the Lethe is the source of the soul’s forgetfulness before its rebirth. Each of these readings is true to the text it draws on, and the modern Lethe — the English word for the forgetfulness of the soul — is the inheritance of all of them. The Lethe is one of the great images of the Western tradition, and the modern reader who has not read Plato or Virgil or Milton has still drunk of the river.
For more, see the Hades profile, the Persephone page, the Sisyphus page, and the Eleusinian Mysteries section of the Demeter profile.