Le acque dell’aldilà greco antico. Acheronte e Stige tra opposizione e complementarità

This article examines the conception of underworld waters in Greekculture, in order to find out which emic categories are used by the Ancients, inparticular in the archaic and classical period. More precisely, the author takes intoaccount the river Acheron river and Styx and tries to highlight the differencesbetween these two kind of water. Acheron is more commonly described as a river ora marsh; on the other side, Styx is represented as a water spring producing a largefall. The article suggest that these different representations reflect different ways ofconceiving the relationships between the world of living and the world of the dead.