Review article

The Motif of Descent into the Underworld in Greek and Latin Literature

Dajana Ćosić ; Franciscan Classical Gymnasium, Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Descent into the underworld, or katabasis, is a mythological as well as a literary motif occurring in different religions and literature of many nations. In the study of epic literature, katabasis is defined as a story of a living person, who possesses certain qualities, descending into the underworld of the dead and returning to world of the living, having fulfilled an objective. This paper shows the representative examples of katabasis in Greek, Latin and Croatian Neo-Latin literature. The review starts with Greek epic poetry, i.e. Book 11 of the Odyssey and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and continues with stories about the katabasis of Theseus and Pirithous, and Heracles’s descent into the underworld of Hades to capture Cerberus. In Latin literature, along with the most famous katabasis – the one undertaken by Aeneas in Book 6 of the Aeneid – it also presents Orpheus’s katabasis from Book X of the Metamorphoses by Ovid and Psyche’s katabasis in the Metamorphoses, also known as The Golden Ass, by Apuleius. There is also a mention of the same motif in the Apocolocyntosis, written by Seneca the Younger. Croatian humanist poet Jakov Bunić described the katabasis of Hercules in the epyllion De raptu Cerberi, giving it an allegorical interpretation in the context of Christianity. Furthermore, this paper applies the classification by José Luis Calvo Martínez, who classifies katabases according to their purpose: necromantic (e.g. Odysseus), romantic (e.g. Orpheus) and hybristic katabases (e.g. Hercules).

Keywords

katabasis; epic poetry; Odyssey; Virgil; Apuleius; Jakov Bunić

Hrčak ID:

236636

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/236636

Publication date:

19.12.2019.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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