Pyriphlegethon
place · 3 works · 3 mentions · 3 anchored passages
the third river
in the texts
Odyssey
A river of the underworld.
You will find it near the place where the rivers Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus (which is a branch of the river Styx) flow into Acheron, and you will see a rock near it, just where the two roaring rivers run into one another.
Phaedo
The third great river, a river of fire whose offshoots are earthly lava streams, used to punish those who outraged their parents.
This is the river which is called Pyriphlegethon, and the streams of lava which spout up at various places on earth are offshoots from it.
The third river flows out between these two, and near the place whence it issues it falls into a vast region burning with a great fire and makes a lake larger than our Mediterranean sea, boiling with water and mud.
Those, however, who are curable, but are found to have committed great sins—who have, for example, in a moment of passion done some act of violence against father or mother and have lived in repentance the rest of their lives, or who have slain some other person under similar conditions—these must needs be thrown into Tartarus, and when they have been there a year the wave casts them out, the homi …
Apologeticum
The mythic river of fire among the dead in pagan tradition, cited as an echo of Gehenna.
For thus too among the dead there is the river Pyriphlegethon.