SparkVlog

The fifth river of the Underworld is never mentioned by Homer, but is nonetheless probably better known than, say, Phlegethon or Cocytus, thanks to having a cooler gimmick and a shorter and easier to pronounce name: the river Lethe, also known as the River of Oblivion (in the sense of forgetfulness, not destruction). As ThoughtCo explains, new inhabitants of the realm of the dead would be made to drink from the Lethe in order to forget their mortal lives. The river Lethe is, in some instances, conflated with the minor goddess Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness (as opposed to the goddess of the river itself), who is the daughter of Eris, the goddess of strife and discord. Some funeral inscriptions from the fifth century B.C.E. indicate that there was also a stream of Mnemosyne (memory) that would allow the dead to retain their memories.

According to Theoi, some sources place Lethe along the border between the gloomy general population of Hades and the Elysian Fields, which are the blessed resting place of the righteous. In his epic, the "Aeneid," Vergil explains that drinking from the river Lethe is a key step in reincarnation: Those souls that are destined to live again must first drink deep of the river of forgetfulness before returning to the world of the living to experience life freshly anew. In his book of agricultural poems, the "Georgics," Vergil says that poppies' soporific properties come from being steeped in the waters of Lethe.

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