Guerber assumed that the rivers where Charon sailed mirrored the sky in Greco-Roman thought. Rivers are a fundamental part of the topography of the underworld and are found in the earliest source materials: In Homer's Iliad, the "ghost" of Patroclus makes specific mention of gates and a river (unnamed) in Hades in Homer's Odyssey, the "ghost" of Odysseus's mother, Anticlea, describes there being many "great rivers and appalling streams", and reference is made to at least four specific rivers. The underworld is made solely for the dead and so mortals do not enter it – with only a few heroic exceptions (who undertook a mythical catabasis: Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, possibly also Odysseus, and in later Roman depictions Aeneas). The underworld is also considered to be an invisible realm, which is understood both in relation to the permanent state of darkness but also a potential etymological link with Hades as the 'unseen place'. Darkness and a lack of sunlight are common features associated with the underworld and, in this way, provide a direct contrast to both the 'normality' of the land of the living (where the sun shines) and also with the brightness associated with Mount Olympus (the realm of the gods). The underworld itself- commonly referred to as Hades, after its patron god, but also known by various metonyms-is described as being located at the periphery of the earth, either associated with the outer limits of the ocean (i.e., Oceanus, again also a god) or beneath the earth. In early mythology (e.g., Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) the dead were indiscriminately grouped together and led a shadowy post-existence however, in later mythology (e.g., Platonic philosophy) elements of post-mortem judgment began to emerge with good and bad people being separated (both spatially and with regards to treatment).
The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual's essence ( psyche) is separated from the corpse and transported to the underworld. In Greek mythology, the Greek underworld, or Hades, is a distinct realm (one of the three realms that make up the cosmos) where an individual goes after death.
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