Lethe

Lethe, whose name means “forgetfulness”, was the daughter of Eris (Strife) in Hesiod, and also the name of the water of forgetfulness that the dead drank in the Underworld. In later poets and philosophers it is a river or plain in the world below, and drinking from it made souls forget their lives before they returned to the upper world.

Lethe the Goddess

Hesiod makes Lethe one of the children of Eris, who is herself a daughter of Night. Strife bore hateful Toil (Ponos), Forgetfulness (Lethe), Famine (Limos), the tearful Pains (Algea), the Battles (Hysminai), the Fights (Machai), the Murders (Phonoi), the Manslaughters (Androktasiai), Quarrels (Neikea), Lying Words (Pseudea Logoi), Disputes (Amphillogiai), Lawlessness (Dysnomia), Ruin (Ate) and Oath (Horkos), “who does most harm to men on earth when anyone willingly swears a false oath” (Theogony 226–232). Hesiod names no father for any of them.

The River and Plain of Lethe

The water of forgetfulness appears in several places in later literature:

• In Aristophanes' Frogs, Charon calls for passengers to the places of the dead across his lake, and the first he names is “the plain of Lethe” (Frogs 186).
• In the myth of Er at the end of Plato's Republic, the souls of the dead journey to the Plain of Oblivion (in Greek, the plain of Lethe), a bare and burning place, and camp at evening by the river Ameles, whose water no vessel can hold. All must drink a measure of it, and those who are not saved by good sense drink more than the measure and forget everything. In the night they are carried up to be born again, but Er himself was not allowed to drink (Republic 10.621a–b). Later writers give the name Lethe to this river of forgetfulness.
• In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas sees in a secluded valley of the Underworld the river Lethe, flowing past peaceful dwellings, with countless nations hovering around it. Anchises explains that these are souls owed second bodies, who drink the carefree waters and long forgetfulness of Lethe's stream (Aeneid 6.703–715). After a thousand years a god calls them all to the river Lethe, so that, forgetful, they may revisit the world above and want to return to bodies again (Aeneid 6.748–751).
• In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the cave of Sleep (Hypnos) lies in a silent, shadowed place where a Lethean stream seeps from the rock and its murmuring invites sleep (Metamorphoses 11.592–615). Ovid thus places the water of Lethe at the home of Hypnos.
• Lucian jokes that the dead must all drink Lethe water: the judge Rhadamanthus agrees that this is the custom (The Downward Journey 28), and in On Funerals he places a meadow of asphodel and a fountain called Lethe, which fights against memory, on the shore of the lake in the Underworld (On Funerals 5).

The sources therefore give no single location. Virgil puts the river in a quiet valley of the Underworld, Plato on a plain beyond the throne of Necessity, Lucian beside a meadow of asphodel, and Ovid at the cave of Sleep.

Lethe and Memory at the Oracle of Trophonius

At the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadea in Boeotia, Pausanias says, the man who is going to consult the oracle must drink the water called the water of Forgetfulness, so that he forgets all that he has been thinking, and then another water, the water of Memory, which makes him remember what he sees after his descent (Description of Greece 9.39.8).

Lethe Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 226–232; Aristophanes, Frogs 186; Plato, Republic 10.621a–b; Virgil, Aeneid 6.703–715, 6.748–751; Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.592–615; Lucian, The Downward Journey 28 and On Funerals 5; Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.8.

See Also: Hypnos, Eris, Styx, Mnemosyne, Ponos, Limos, Algea, Makhai, Androktasiai, Pseudologoi, Dysnomia, Ate, Horcus