Styx

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Drive over the Styx, etching by Gustave Doré , 1861

Styx ( Greek  Στύξ , in Homer Στυγὸς ὕδωρ , water of horror ) is in Greek mythology next to Acheron , Lethe , Kokytos , Phlegethon and Eridanus a river of the underworld and a river goddess. In Greek, the Styx is feminine, which is rare for Greek river names. In English, both genders - both the and the Styx - common. In the Duden, however, only the masculine " der Styx" is listed.

myth

According to Hesiod, Styx is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys , with Hyginus she is the daughter of Nyx and Erebos .

According to the legend, the river Styx represents the border between the world of the living and the realm of the dead Hades . It flows around Hades nine times. The souls of the dead are from Charon , geschifft, the ferryman on the river. So that they could pay the ferryman Charon, a coin ( obolus ) was placed under the tongue of the dead and thus given to death. The deceased who were not given this coin had to spend a hundred years on the bank of the river before they were allowed to cross, which made the burial and the proper ordination of the dead extremely important.

The water of the river Styx was assigned various properties: on the one hand, Achilles , the hero of the Iliad (the legend of the fall of Troy ), was bathed in it by his mother Thetis , which made him invulnerable. Only the heel on which she was holding him was not bathed and thus not invulnerable. This “ Achilles heel ” was his undoing. On the other hand, the water was considered poisonous; Alexander the Great is said to have been poisoned with it.

The Olympic gods usually swore their most sacred oath “by the Styx”. The willful breach of such an oath had serious consequences for her, namely the loss of her voice for nine years.

Following a view that was widespread in antiquity, today's Mavronéri near Nonakris , which rises in the Arcadian mountain range Aroania in the Peloponnese , is identified with the ancient Styx. Other ancient localizations suspected the Styx on Euboea , on the Avernersee near Kyme or near Ephesus .

reception

The Dead River Styx appears later in many cases as a literary motif, such as in Dante's Divine Comedy , with Thomas Mann in Death in Venice , the wardrobe and The Black Swan as well as in the poem Don Juan in the underworld of Charles Baudelaire . Else Lasker-Schüler's first volume of poetry is entitled Styx . He also serves as the title giver in music, for example in compositions by Michael Beil , Erwin Koch-Raphael , Gija Kantscheli or in the song Joyride on Styx by the pop music group Chiabola and the name of the rock group Styx . The crime film The Case with Styx based on the novel Rittmeister Styx by the writer Georg Mühlen-Schulte also uses the name. Living over the Styx is the name of a passage in the computer / console game Assassin's Creed: Revelations and God of War III .

On July 2, 2013, the fifth moon of the dwarf planet Pluto was named Styx on the basis of a name proposal submitted after an internet vote .

STYX is an award-winning German-Austrian feature film production with Susanne Wolff from 2018.

literature

Web links

Commons : Styx  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homer , Iliad 2, 755; 14, 271.
  2. ^ Styx, the Duden's website . Retrieved March 6, 2017.
  3. ↑ Hesiod , Theogony 361; 385.
  4. ^ Hyginus , Fabulae Praefatio.
  5. ↑ Virgil , Aeneid 6,324-330.
  6. ↑ Homer , Iliad 14: 230-360.
  7. ↑ Compare, for example, Herodotus 6:74; Pausanias 8.17.6-18.6; Pliny , Naturalis historia 31.26; Tertullian , de anima 50.
  8. ^ Nonnos of Panopolis , Dionysiaka 13,163.
  9. ↑ Strabo 5,244.
  10. ↑ Achilleus Tatios 8:12 f.
  11. ↑ IAU1303 News Release: Names for New Pluto Moon Accepted by the IAU After Public Vote , from July 2, 2013
  12. ↑ Styx. In: Filmportal.de. Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum eV, accessed on June 6, 2019 .