Often confused for one another, the goddess Lethe and the River Lethe both had the power to bring about forgetfulness on both large and small scales. Lethe was embodied in mythology by not one, but two figures. Lethe meant not just the forgetting of a single fact or event, but a complete loss of all memory and the concealment of truth. XXXIV.The word lethe in ancient Greek is usually translated as “forgetfulness.” Its meaning, however, was much more exact than simple moments of thoughtlessness that are common to us all. Lethe, in the Earthly Paradise atop the Mountain of Purgatory Dante, held in the arms of Matilda, is immersed in the Lethe so that he may wipe out all memory of sin ( Purg.Cocytus, the Ninth Circle, the frozen lake of ice containing various traitors and, finally, Satan himself ( Inf.Phlegethon, the Seventh Circle, Ring 1, containing the Violent Against Others ( Inf.Styx, the Fifth Circle, containing the Wrathful and the Sullen Dante crosses in Phlegyas' skiff ( Inf.Acheron, separating the Vestibule from Hell proper Dante crosses with the help of Charon ( Inf.Other mythological rivers borrowed by Dante from Greek lore:

The word 'eunoe' is one of Dante's many neologisms presumably derived from Greek ' eu-,' meaning 'good' and 'noe,' meaning 'mind.' XXXIII, in the concluding lines of that canto and of the entire cantica, Dante makes particular reference to the dolce ber ('sweet draught' ) of Eunoe when he explains that he wished he possessed greater space to write of the water that 'ne'er would satiate me.' It is unclear who Matilda was in real life, but, nonetheless, her function is to cause the penitent to forget his or her sins (now that these sins have been purged) and then sip from the waters of Eunoe so that the soul may enter heaven full of the strength of his or her life's good deeds. Upon completing his or her sentence in Purgatory, a soul is washed in the rivers Lethe and Eunoe (in that order) by Matilda. They then pass through Eunoe to have the memories of their good deeds in life strengthened.

In the Purgatorio, the second cantica of Dante's poem, penitents reaching the Garden of Eden at the top of Mount Purgatory are first washed in the waters of the river Lethe in order to forget the memories of their mortal sins. For other uses, see Eunoë and Eunoë (wife of Bogudes).Įunoe ( Greek: Εὐνοη) is a feature of Dante's Divine Comedy created by Dante as the fifth river of the dead (taking into consideration that Cocytus was described as a lake rather than a river).

River Lethe by Yara Hossam