ODYSSEY MAP · STOP 8/14
Where Is the Gate of the Underworld?
A living man’s voyage to the country of shades
Following Circe’s directions, Odysseus sails to the edge of the world, to the misty land of the Cimmerians beyond the river Ocean. He pours sacrificial blood into a trench, and the shades come crowding. The blind seer Tiresias tells him his route — and the one prohibition: do not touch the Cattle of the Sun.
Three times he tries to embrace his mother’s ghost; three times his arms close on emptiness. And from the shade of Achilles he hears the bitterest confession in the epic: better to be a poor hired hand on the living earth than king over all the dead.
Where is it in the real world?
The Greek world knew more than one gate to Hades. The most famous: the Necromanteion, the oracle of the dead on the river Acheron in Epirus; the cave at Cape Tainaron at the southern tip of the Peloponnese; and volcanic Lake Avernus near Naples — where Virgil later sends Aeneas down.
What awaits you in the game?
This stop is for wisdom: offer the sacrifice properly and ask the right questions, and Tiresias’s prophecy lights the stops ahead. Rush through, and you will choose the rest of the way in the dark.
Quick facts
- Position on the route
- 8 / 14
- Previous stop
- Circe’s Island (Aeaea) · 90 nautical miles · ≈ 13 months under sail
- Next stop
- The Sirens · 180 nautical miles · ≈ 1 months under sail
- Modern location
- Acheron Necromanteion, Epirus, Greece — other candidates: Tainaron, Avernus
- Region
- In the epic, the western rim of the world, beyond Ocean
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