COCYTUS
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaIn Greek mythology, Cocytus, meaning river of wailing or lamentation, was the river in the underworld on the banks of which the dead who could not pay Charon wandered, according to most accounts, for one hundred years. It flowed into the river Acheron, across which lay Hades, the mythological abode of the dead.
In The Divine Comedy (Inferno), Cocytus is the ninth and lowest circle of Hell and is frozen by the flapping wings of Lucifer, or Satan. In the Inferno Cocytus is referred to as a frozen lake rather than a river, although it originates from the same source as the other infernal rivers. Dante described it as being the home of traitors and those who committed acts of complex fraud.
It is divided into four descending "rounds," or sections: Caina, after the Biblical Cain; traitors to blood relatives. Antenora, after Antenor from the Iliad; traitors to country. Ptolomea, after Ptolemy, governor of Jericho, who murdered his guests (1 Maccabees); traitors to guests.
Judecca, after Judas Iscariot; traitors to masters and benefactors. Lucifer is at the center of the circle, his lower body trapped in ice, and is depicted with three mouths. One mouth gnaws on Brutus and another on Cassius, the leading conspirators against Julius Caesar, and both are chewed feet foremost with their heads protruding. The chewed head of Judas is in the centre mouth.
The name Cocytus was also given to the setting (on a mythical island off the coast of the American state of North Carolina) of the novel A Snowman in July by Gary Bolick, and to a planet in the science fiction novel The Dig, by Alan Dean Foster, based on the LucasArts adventure video game.
Cocytus is also the name of a sword weilded by Cervantes de Leon in Soul Calibur II. Fittingly, it is decribed as having been excavated from permafrost, and is perpetually frozen.
